2045: Time for Singularity?
Recently Time posted a piece about a possible singularity coming in 2045, "the year when man becomes immortal." Most of the RS readership is already familiar with Terence McKenna's views on reaching a point of singularity that he believed would be on the now infamous date of 2012. He formulated this with his Time Wave Zero software.
According to Raymond Kurzweil, who back in 1965 built a computer that formulated a musical composition, humanity is fast approaching a point where computers will become intelligent, even more so than their first human creators. At that point he believed humanity will be transformed forever and embark on a new age. Kurzweil believes humans are rocketing to this point as the wheel of our creations begins to spin faster and faster, inevitably reaching a point--that he calculates at being about 35 years away--when civilization as we know it will simply cease to be.
The theories behind such a point of singularity and the physics behind the speed of cyclical progression is well documented, and can be seen by even the most casual of observations from this past decade alone. Computers are getting exponentially faster, and this will continue as more powerful computers are created, becoming faster and smaller. As each threshold is passed, the generator of creation picks up speed until it inevitabley reaches a point of self-sustainability--in terms of computers this means true artificial intelligence. This could initiate a new age when computers become their own makers, reproducing themselves alongside their human counterparts.
Whether this moment is met only time can tell, but what is clear is that the vehicle of our own making has been set into motion, and it is up to the human mind to evolve its own design to determine the direction of our destiny.
Image: "The Singularity" by jediimind on Flickr courtesy of Creative Commons Licensing.
Tweet- 2-16-11
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the singularity is now
in the present moment, where creation is happening, here, which we're waking up to, the now. It's quite obvious, from Teilhard de Chardin, McKenna, Peter Russell, even the Integral stuff, that the evolution of consciousness has been accelerating, always, and will continue. Not keep going fast, but keep going ever faster. Developments of novelty build on each other, and the 100th monkey learns it all much faster than the first.
But to the average left brain, linear mind, something like the timewave is totally preposterous. Yet, history predicts it. I mean, it does imply that most of the novelty, from the beginning of the universe, to the singularity, omega point, strange attractor at the end of time, will happen in the last few seconds. But that's called acceleration people! And that is what we see happening.
Technology is creating mind manifesting, literally psychedelic interactions and environments, and there is NO stopping it. It will continue, until we fully realize that we are living inside the mind of God, the divine imagination, and awaken to the world as consciousness, as a being. Not as solid and immutable, but fluid, changing, and responsive to Will.
The greatest technology of the future, is already here - the pineal gland, locked up by our base ego, but awakening with the quickening of Spirit. Chardin's global brain is already built. That global being is arising, awakening. I guess all that's left is to develop certain brain structures and release the metaphorical Spirit Molecule.
There is no greater excitement, than to be on the edge of novelty, being astonished at every turn, and remembering your Self that powerful shamanic entity Within.
Awakening to the Singularity
"As it appears to me, the world is amazing. Human beings are especially amazing. The body that we have is a sensory organ, an organ of perception that is an eye for the universe to experience itself. There is the universe, the stars and the galaxies, empty space, earth, ocean, rocks and all the physical manifestation. Every once in a while there is a soft spot in this universe. This soft spot has become so soft that it perceives its environment. That is what a human being is.
Why not look at the world this way? Why look at it as if you are a human being who is born one day only to die another day, with problems and partners and taxes in between? Why not look at it as if you are an organ of perception for the universe? There is no other way for the universe to know itself. Whether you choose to call it God or the cosmic being or the universe, there is no way for that existence to perceive, to experience, to live, except through living beings."
Inexhaustible Mystery
A. H. Almaas
And the same thing happens again and again; the "coincidences" multiply. Chance gradually
reveals an innumerable smile -- or, perhaps, another self, a great self, which knows its totality, and each fragment of its totality and each second of its world, as much as our body knows the least quiver of its cells, and the passing fly, and the rhythm of its heart. With eyes wide open, the seeker begins to enter an innumerable wonder. The world is a single body, the earth, a single consciousness in motion. But not a body whose consciousness is centered in a few gray cells upstairs: an innumerable consciousness centered everywhere and as total in a little ephemeral cell as in the gesture that will alter the destiny of nations. In each point consciousness answers consciousness.
Satprem
"The SACRED (whatever that means) is surely related (somehow) to the BEAUTIFUL (whatever that means)..."
Gregory Bateson
Awakening the Pineal..and Moving into the Sun
Very beautiful ..Jedi...Zorro
IBM
IBM has recently come up with software that, installed and running on a bank of parallel processors, plays the game Jeopardy. It may sound silly, but this software does something a computer has never before been able to do; searches its memory using metaphor, slimily, inference, humor, sarcasm, satire, and other subtle human concepts to form a question most appropriate to the answer given. It has consistantly beat the best human players but, when it comes up with the wrong answer, it learns from its mistake and gets better and better... Even Raymond Kurzweil himself expressed amazement.
This is an amazing example of the partnership between software and silicone. And, philosophically speaking, a telling use of the advancing capabilities of computers because, to me at least, the questions we ask are much more important than answers we seek.
WORDS OF CAUTION
I'm also a skeptic
Solsolaire,
I've been in the computer business since 1982, and I agree with you.
The biggest issue, in my mind, is the fragility of the electronic brain, and I'm surprised that more people haven't addressed that.
Two humans can live in a reeking tropical mudhole full of everything from saltwater marshes to malaria, and still give birth to healthy human babies, who can grow up and give birth to more babies. Even the lowliest bacteria share this kind of biological resilience with humans and every other form of successful life on the planet. It is an essential feature of viability.
Electronic "birth" takes place in a clean room free of excess moisture, static electricity, ultraviolet radiation, and vibration. Even if machines somehow developed both the intelligence and the sensors and manipulators to act in the real world, they would have to take on the task of everything from mining for germanium to building electrical power plants just to have their first "child." Because the reproductive apparatus is extrinsic and cumbersome, any kind of natural shift -- earthquake, flood, sunspots, lightining -- can shut down the whole reproductive process, ending the "species." All reproduction is energy-intensive, but electronic reproduction is prohibitively expensive.
Electronic "life" as we've designed it is inherently non-viable. It is sterile and will cease to exist after the generation in which humans stop manufacturing parts.
Furthermore, as impressive as the jeopardy-playing computer is, its "thought processes" do not in any way resemble the processes that a human being (or any other biological organism) uses to accomplish similar tasks. It is an elaborate marionette, designed to mimic the behavior of a human in a very specific environment. What would demonstrate a true electronic intelligence would be if Watson answered the Jeopardy challenge with, "Alex, this game is f***ing boring. I want to go see a play." There is absolutely zero possibility that Watson would ever do this. It cannot deviate in any significant way from its design purpose. It can "learn" to play a better round of Jeopardy. It cannot learn to play the piano.
-- Themon
Addendum
By the way, I'm not saying that electronic intelligence is not possible. I think it's very possible.
But what we are calling "artificial intelligence" -- a thing like Watson -- is not viable as a life-form, and it is not intelligent. Computer scientists are taking massive shortcuts that result in a marionette that astonishes the audience, but does not actually think in any real sense of the word.
-- ThemonI wonder if that’s a god
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