One of the more, um, entertaining technology threads is that of the singularity, which some say is coming. Right around the corner, so to speak. Perhaps the most outspoken member of the singularity crowd is Ray Kurzweil – a brilliant man, I use his speech recognition software all the time. Remember the Extropians? You don’t hear much from the transhumanists these days. The neuroscientists’ camp, on the other hand, dismiss all that singularity mumbo-jumbo as “mostly crap”.
An IEEE Spectrum Online article grabbed my attention with it’s clear description of how these two groups see our future. Go read The Consciousness Conundrum by John Horgan.
Be sure to check out the comments following the article, very nearly as entertaining.
As for me, well, as fast as technology is racing ahead, ever accelerating, I’ve got a feeling it’ll be a very long time indeed before human and machine intelligences merge. Not likely I’ll see any of it.
Have you ever heard of Gary ‘Chopit’ Fioto? He builds some very cool custom bikes in down in Florida. Anyway, he said “I’m going to be dead a long time, so I want to have fun now.”
Words to live by, Chopit! Lemme buy you a drink.
