Wil McCarthy on Singularity

From: Damien Broderick (thespike@satx.rr.com)
Date: Mon Apr 04 2005 - 18:17:29 MDT

http://www.scifiweekly.com/issue415/labnotes.html

ending with:

<Don't get me wrong; the singularity (or inflection point) is a force to be
reckoned with. We'll hit several of them over the next 100 years­in
population, computing power, ecological resources and the explosive growth
of Third World economies. It promises to be a rocky ride. Australian
writer/philosopher Damien Broderick, author of The Spike, has offered an
interesting opinion, that if you connect the centers of these many S-curves
you'll find an even larger exponential curve behind them, representing the
sum total growth in human capability. And when that one goes vertical,
Vinge's predictions­ranging from the transcendent to the nightmarish­will
very suddenly come true, for better or worse. Maybe he's right; it's
certainly a hard argument to refute.

But again, if history is any guide, that moment of shock, if it comes, will
be very brief­a few years at most­after which things will level off, settle
down and become a lot less interesting. And while the world on the other
side of that event may look very different from the world of today, my
personal prediction is that we'll still see ourselves in it, with habits
and motives largely unchanged. The desire for comfort, for wealth, for
entertainment and novelty and pleasure ... these things will never go away.
We'll just be richer, more powerful and wiser for our troubles. And what,
exactly, is wrong with that? >

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