Credit: NASA
WHEN MY GRANDMOTHER was born, in the dying years of the 19th century, the idea of people flying was fanciful. By the time she was six (in 1903), the Wright brothers had flown their little engine-powered glider over the sand dunes of North Carolina.
Within a generation, airlines were flying people between Europe and Australia and, another generation later, the sound barrier was broken. The first artificial satellite was orbiting Earth a decade after that. Within 12 years, people were walking on the Moon.
To my grandmother, this must have all seemed too much. On a clear and warm night years ago, looking up at the beauty of a full Moon rising, she confided in me, “You know, they didn’t really go to the Moon.”
I was puzzled. “You mean, the astronauts?” I asked. She nodded her head. “It was done in a film studio. It had to be. How could someone go to the Moon?”
She’s now dearly departed, but her observation stayed with me. It’s not that she believed in conspiracy theories. She just had difficulty accepting such monumental change in her lifetime.
More than 40 years ago, Alvin Toffler coined a name for this condition: ‘future shock’. It’s what happens when the familiar becomes strange, changing to the point of being unrecognisable – such as your street or your bank – and when the strange becomes ordinary, such as computers talking to you on the telephone.
We are likely to face many such challenges in the 21st century; some small, some large. For this will be a century like no other. Global economic growth has risen spectacularly in the 10,000 years since the advent of agriculture, and began accelerating after the Industrial Revolution.
It has been picking up speed in the 20th century, and computers now double their processing ability every two years – a phenomenal growth rate known as Moore’s Law, which has held for more than 50 years.
But, according to many noted thinkers, this is nothing compared to what might happen the day we build a computer whose processing power substantially surpasses human cognitive capability and ask it to build even better computers.
Soon, Moore’s Law will go from a doubling of processing capability every two years to every few hours, as fast computers build even faster computers which in turn design faster and faster computers leading to runaway technological development. The silicon progeny of these computers will have astounding processing power, and may even become sentient.
Intractable problems will be offered to these artificially intelligent leviathans – curing cancer, making batteries 500 times more efficient, extracting more power from sunlight – and they will spit out novel solutions that will dramatically accelerate technological development while drastically reducing costs, leading to an economic boom that will spike off the charts (see "We are the robots", Cosmos Online).
Future Shock response
I agree that science is fabulous and fascinating, and what the future might bring is mind boggling ... on paper the future is exciting ... in reality if we are not smart enough to solve our environmental problems ... human life might not exist in 50 or 100 years... We all want it to, but are we smart enough or are our computers smart enough to fix the problems?
The Singularity is Bunk
The idea that computers can and will attain superhuman intellectual abilities is as fanciful a myth as Adam, Eve, the talking snake and the apple. Is anyone in this world so gullible as to believe that a singularity is coming?
Technological civilization is crumbling. Technological civilization is dying.
There are some problems which are so large and complicated that even hyperintelligent godlike computers cannot solve them. Not that any hyperintelligent godlike computers will ever exist.
The future trajectory of civilization is quite literally dismal. The human population bubble will reach its apex and collapse. Resource depletion, climate change and social instability will lead to the collapse of industrial nations such as Australia and America. Demographic collapse will lead to the collapse of Europe, Japan and Russia. Resource depletion will lead to the collapse of the oil empire ... the Middle East, Mexico and Nigeria won't survive once their resources run out.
Humankind reached for the stars and fell back down to the Earth. The ancient myths described this process of pride and humilitation because humankind has experienced numerous times, too numerous to count.
Our civilization is dying and the singularity won't appear. Our civilization is dying and humans won't ever return to the moon or walk on Mars. Our civilization is dying and the computers will die with it, deprived of their electricity and corroding to dust.
Aren't You a Ray of Sunshine!
People have been predicting the end of people for about as long as people have been around. The predictions have always been wrong. What evidence do you have that the End is Nigh?
Thirty years ago, Paul Erlich gave us maybe a decade or two before we'd all starve. Three hundred years ago, it was Malthus making the same prognostication.
Nowadays, we have the worshipers at the Church of Gore telling us what might happen if we don't curb our CO2 production. So far, the oceans haven't risen. Global temperatures have flatlined, if not actually decreased since 1998. New York is unseasonably cool. The Arctic icecap has recovered to levels comparable to 1979 and no polar bears have been known to drown. Even in summer, Warmists were driven back from "documenting global warming" by extremely cold weather and thick sea ice.
More and more scientists are questioning the "consensus view" of AGW, while the IPCC refuses to remove any of the dissenters from the list of signatories to their questionable reports.
And what are the solutions to this "crisis" bandied about? Grossly impair the industries and Liberties enjoyed by the Free World, keep the Third World in abject squalor, and grow government to the point where it will control virtually every aspect of our lives.
Forgive me if all that makes me a "denier". The earth, contrary to "consensus" is doing just fine. People are, by and large, doing better than they ever have. Prophecies of doom have come and gone and everything just got better, thanks to industry and technology.
And we get to hear from another malcontent that thinks we're all gonna die.
The more things change, the more they stay the same! I wonder if Mr. DaSilva will spike this letter and close off the comments feature?
Another Ray of Sunshine
Humans may go so far as to believe that each of their opinions represents the absolute truth. Such hubris may be dangerous, in allowing us to become blind to subtle changes around us. Ignoring changes in temperature, dying species and the effects of overpopulation are to the detriment of society. Sea ice IS melting in the Arctic faster than scientists first predicted, there is a rapid increase in infectious diseases exacerbated by warming temperatures and while polar bears haven’t yet drowned, they are starving.
There will be a price to pay for rampant technology at the expense of finding solutions to pollution and world hunger. That is logic. If people truly aspired to more than basic survival, they would stop and look at the condition of the world around them.
From any perspective, it is obvious that people are interested in self-promotion and not so much in the world condition. (If my stomach is full and my family is happy, why does it matter that someone is starving in Africa?) Such pinhole thinking will eventually be the undoing of mankind.
Governments send troops to fight a foreign cause on foreign soil for the personal agenda of a few wealthy elite and the people who elected those in power stand by. One-track perspective will keep this planet from reaching its potential and be its eventual undoing.
In the meantime, eat, drink and be merry. Perhaps “industry and technology” will be enough to save us from ourselves after all.
The single singularity
If a technological singularity were possible, wouldn't if have already occurred among other alien life forms? The out-year predictions of the singularity is that the entire universe will one day be co-opted for use by post-humans and available to us (or our technological descendants). Seeing as no evidence of this is available in present day - i.e. the universe has not been co-opted as far as we can tell by another intelligent life form or their technology --- one must conclude that A. the singularity is not possible or B. we are either truly alone OR the single most advance species in the universe or C. the singularity has already occurred and our existence is actually part of another life form's master universe (e.g. a God). Which then loops us back into intelligent design. Yikes.
Just some thoughts.