Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Surviving Immortality: Just getting to the Singularity is the hard part.

August 17, 2007
Surviving Immortality: Just getting to the Singularity is the hard part.
By Robert X. Cringely

I've been thinking about the Technological Singularity, which to proper geeks is that point where computers become smarter than humans and supposedly all bets are off as technological development races forward faster than we can catch it and you and I are either left eating bonbons or are put to death by computers no longer amused by serving us. Life post-Singularity will, of course, be somewhere in between those two eventualities. Zits may be abolished but youth will still be anguished. Computers may be designing warp drives but I'll still be paying my mortgage. Rather than a technological Hell or Utopia, the Singularity is likely to leave us still in our sitcom just with different props. What's fascinating about the Singularity is not so much guessing what life will be like then as looking at our very approach to the concept and some likely side effects we'll bump into along the way.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070817_002727.html

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home