Final Inquiry Essay

Here it is!

                          The Workings of the Singularity and Its Possibilities

The Singularity.  What once was a word describing the center of a black hole now is being used by prominent futurists and scientists around the world.  The point where technology becomes so advanced that it becomes smarter than humans and propels humankind into a new age of unforeseen growth.  Two of the most prominent scientists in this field are Vernor Vinge and Raymond Kurzweil.  Vernor Vinge was one of the original creators of the theory, he has been working on the ideas of the singularity for decades now.  Raymond Kurzweil, on the other hand, has popularized it, most prominently with his exposure of it in his tome The Singularity Is Near and the recent cover article in February 2011’s TIME magazine.  Countless articles pertaining to the singularity exists around the internet, but there are a sparse few that address the main questions most people have about the singularity.

The first of these is exactly how the singularity will occur.  Many people reading into the singularity get the impression that it will just suddenly occur in the future (2030 or 2045, depending on the author).  What most fail to realize is that the authors of the singularity have come up with these dates thanks to a law called The Law of Accelerating Returns.  What this states is that the more advanced technology gets, the faster more progress will occur.  It’s a positive feedback cycle, which will lead to “…doubling the rate of progress every decade, we’ll see a century of progress–at today’s rate–in only 25 calendar years”(Kurzweil).  Technology is expanding exponentially, so it progresses faster and faster every passing day.  Due to this growth rate, which will only increase, a time where we can create smarter-than-human intelligence is soon to come upon us.  Even after understanding this, however, many will still have many questions about the singularity.

These questions can range from what exactly is the singularity, why hasn’t it happened yet, and the signs that show that it’s coming.  Vernor Vinge, one of the most prominent scientists in the field, states that the singularity occurs when “…humans, using technology, will be able to create, or become, creatures of superhuman intelligence”(Wolens).  He goes on to state that it will change humanity forever once it occurs, it will become the beginning of a new era.  He states that the singularity couldn’t have happened until this moment in time – humans have not had access to the technology that we have now.  He states that the singularity is indeed coming, in the future, but it is slowly approaching.  Some of the symptoms people can watch out for are discussed, Vinge says that “…if you notice more and more substitution for using fragments of human cognition in the outside world — if human occupational responsibility becomes more and more automated in areas involving judgment that haven’t yet been automated” (Wolens).  So as technology becomes a more and more vital part of life, the singularity will continue to progress. 

Even though large amounts of scientific evidence has been demonstrated in the occurrence of the singularity, the elephant in the room is the question “What if the Singularity doesn’t happen?”  This is a legitimate question that deserves much attention.  It’s been asked to, as many other questions have been, to none other than Vernor Vinge.  His views on it are very interesting and deserve a look into.  He states that if the singularity doesn’t occur, several stages will progress.  The first of these is the stagnation of technology – possibly caused by “Spectacular failures in large, total automation projects. (Human flight controllers occasionally run aircraft into each other; a bug in a fully automatic system could bring a dozen aircraft to the same point in space and time)” (Vinge), which leads to the abandonment of the progression of technology.  He calls such a time the “Age of Failed Dreams”.  He addresses the fact that this is in a peaceful world- we still have a chance for Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) to occur, most likely in the form of a nuclear conflict.  He hopes this isn’t the case, and points to another idea:  The Golden Age of humanity.  This would be where the Internet becomes even more powerful, so information is widely available, leading to a smarter population.  Then, the global population is smaller, leading to a higher quality of life. This scenario seems very likely – technology is progressing so much that out future is intertwined with it, the course of human fate is forever changed by it.

The Singularity is more than just an idea, a theory:  It’s a way of thinking about the future.  It’s knowing that technology is going to become even more powerful and integrated with humanity, and it will change history forever.  The information is widely available, researching the prominent figures such as Kurzweil and Vinge will lead to a wealth of information in the form of data and predictions about the future.  The future is now.  Just yesterday, an article was published that had researchers prove teleportation is possible.  A decade ago, the Internet was used quite a bit, however, compare it to today.  The lowered cost of technology and advancements have made connecting with people all around the world not only possible, but easy.  The Singularity is coming, and it will change the world forever.

Finishing up our Inquiry Project - Abstracts

This week our group's been finishing up our abstract, and I wanted to put up what I said for my "Personal Reaction".  Here it is!

I learned a lot about the future and the singularity theory in reading these three books.  Before them, I had never even considered what would happen in the future.  Now, I have some very good ideas about what will occur in the distant future.  After reading The Singularity is Near, I got a very good idea of what would occur in the future, as well as the proof behind it, mostly with the Law of Accelerating Returns.  Reading Future Shock showed me that the ideas have been around for a while, only that the ideas have been refined and proven.  Overall, I’m very glad with what I’ve learned from this project.

Back at school full-time!

Now that I've decided where I'm going to college (William & Mary), I am back in school full-time and have a lot more time to work.  I am currently reading Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge for the last book in my Inquiry project.  It's an extremely different book compared to what I'm used to reading, it's not a book that says what might happen in the future, like The Singularity is Near and Future Shock.  Rather, it is a novel about the future, and the future shown in the novel is extremely interesting.  I'm enjoying the book so far, I should finish it over the weekend.

Back From Visiting Colleges - Also, Staging Twelfth Night

I just got back on Thursday from a whirlwind college visit throughout the East Coast, and it's helped me trim my list of colleges I'm considering.  Back at school, Sally and I are working together to stage Act 1, Scene 2, and preform it come Monday.  We picked this scene because it only has two characters:  The Captain and Viola, since we only have two people in our group.  We're keeping to the original script, I think it will turn out well.

Second Singularity Inquiry Essay

Here's my second Singularity essay, focusing on the book Future Shock.  I hope you enjoy it!

Gustavo Guerrero
March 14, 2011
English 4
Stephanie Lytle

Inquiry Essay 2

The future holds many secrets, and only time will reveal them.  That sentiment, however, has not stopped a slew of people from thinking about what the future holds.  When starting this inquiry project, a group of peers and I were involved in studying the theory of The Singularity, where in the future technological growth becomes extremely progressive.  From studies of that, we have delved into different theories and studies about what the future could hold.  We based our inquiry project on the question of “What do futurists predict about our future?”  We started our study with the book that we were already studying, The Singularity is Near.  After that book, we have dove into a book called Future Shock, written by Alvin Toffler.  Future Shock is a book about how the rate of change is affecting people worldwide – in 1970.  This immediately attracted my attention – the book was written in the 70’s, yet it holds many similar ideas as the books released in the past decade.  Future Shock deals with a phenomenon that Toffler calls Future Shock – what he terms as “the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in a short a time” (Toffler 2).  Inside the book, Toffler explores how the rapid rate of change is affecting the world and the impact of global events and how the rapid rate of change is transforming technology forever.

Toffler brings the example of how rapid globalism has broken our boundaries, especially compared with the past.  With the advent of such technologies such as the radio, the world suddenly gets much smaller.  Toffler explains how events that, in the past the impact of a war was mostly contained to the country in which it occurred, now, it has a ripple effect across the globe.  When he wrote the book in 1970, he spoke about Vietnam, saying that “A war in Vietnam alters basic political alignments in Peking, Moscow, and Washington, touches off protests in Stockholm, affects financial transactions in Zurich, triggers secret diplomatic moves in Algiers” (Toffler 16).  He also notes that in addition to current events affecting us; past events that changed a country’s ideas affect the modern world in small ways.  This observation does not directly answer about what will happen in the future today.  However, Toffler predicts that the world is only going to get more and more interwoven, from the viewpoint of a man in 1970.  Looking at the world today, especially with context to the recent upheaval in the Middle East and the direct impact of that on the stock market, it becomes clear that Toffler’s predictions in that sense have come true.  His predictions seem like they still apply today as well – with the advent of social networking, the world is more interwoven than ever before.  This is not the only example of Alvin Toffler’s ideas passing on into the next age, however.  Toffler also explores what sounds similar to Raymond Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, where technology becomes exponentially cheaper and powerful as time progresses.

In Toffler’s words, “Technology feeds on itself” (Toffler 26).  Toffler goes into what he thinks the future will bring in the form of technology, much like Kurzweil does 30-some years later.  Toffler makes several notes throughout the book about how technology has slowly advanced until the Industrial Revolution, where it began increasing exponentially.  Toffler focuses on the example of transportation when he talks about what he calls “Accelerative Thrust”.  He compares the breaking of the 100 mph barrier in 1880, then states that “it took fifty-eight years, however, to quadruple the limit….man was cracking the 400-mph line” (Toffler 26).  Toffler’s ideas about this recurs throughout the book, and I think it’s important to note the similarities that this theory has to current ones, and that his ideas still are in full function today.

Future Shock has been a great help to my studies on the future.  It has provided viewpoints of a time not too long ago by years, but ages technology-wise.  Future Shock has presented many ideas that still hold firm, even though it was published over 30 years ago.  With the ideas of Future Shock combined with the more data-rich studies found in The Singularity is Near, I am getting a better idea of what technology in the future will look like, or at  least what path it will follow.  Future Shock complements The Singularity is Near by providing even more proof that The Law of Accelerating Returns is fact, showing that technology gets more powerful every year.  With the knowledge of these two books in hand, I should be able to read my last book and develop an extremely well-rounded idea of what the future should bring.  Then, I can reflect on this in five, ten, twenty years and see what’s actually happened.             

   

Retell, Respond, Relate: Pages 50-100 of Future Shock

Retell

The second set of 50 pages in Alvin Toffler's Future Shock  focus on how society has changed in the past few centuries.  One of his main observations is that we have become a "Throw-Away" society.  He says that we are used to the world having things replaced constantly, this is mostly because of lowering costs of items - it almost is cheaper, at the time of the book, to buy some items new rather than have the old ones repaired.  A very prominent example of this whole feeling is when the author talks about his daughter, who looked for the drugstore and couldn't find it, saying it "must have been torn down".  The author contrasts what he would have assumed, in his time, stores didn't close down that fast, it wasn't natural.   

Respond

This second reading session I have done really shows how society has been the way it is for some time, or at least has been evolving to become this way.  This reading was extremely interesting, although a bit disturbing in his ideas of how far our ideas of "throwing away" have gone.

Relate

I can relate this now to two things - the first is my previous reading, The Singularity is Near.  Both books observe how fast society has changed, and the consequences that brings.  I can also relate this to my life - I see this "Throw-Away" society every day, some things are just cheaper to keep buying rather than reusing.  It's going to be extremely interesting to see how this book progresses.

Future Shock - Retell, Respond, Relate - The First 50 Pages

Here's my Retell, Respond, and Relate for Future Shock.

Retell
The first 50 pages of Alvin Toffler's Future Shock is an mostly an introduction to his theories and ideas, as well as a ton of facts about humanity.  Toffler notes how humanity has achieved greater things in shorter amounts of time, he uses the printing press and speed records as examples.  "The first steam engine, introduced in 1825 could muster a top speed of only 13 mph...by the 1960's rocket planes approached speeds of 4000 mph" (Toffler 26).  He also talks about the expanding footprint of humanity on the planet, citing that the amount of cities with over 1 million people has skyrocketed in the last century.
Respond
I really am liking this reading.  It's not as hard-core scientific as some other books I've been reading, the author is clearly intending this for a more broad audience.  His comparisons really highlight the progress of humanity, and even though I'm only 50 or so pages in, I'm excited for what else he will bring to the table.  He discusses amazing ideas, such as subterranean cities in areas that are already populated.  The thing that really amazes me, however, is that this was written in the 1970's.
Relate
I can easily relate this to the other readings I have done for this project, most notably The Singularity is Near by Raymond Kurzweil.  The fact that the same ideas have been present for a while, excluding their obvious evolution in eloquence and depth of data is really interesting.  The author discusses Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating returns, not with the same name, but the same ideas are still there.  I hope to see more similarities and differences as I delve further into the book.