‘The Singularity’—Defined and Probed

02/26/2006

Paul Munnis

Many people know of Ray Kurzweil, engineer and futurist, a man who has advanced the notion of “The Singularity.” He defines this as symbiosis between man and machine, a relationship that is growing exponentially and manifesting itself as parallel evolution and happening on an exponential growth curve.

That is a real mouthful and it portends a huge revolution ahead that is influencing societal and political change.

That mankind is evolving is not in dispute anywhere in the realm of science. Engineers can now chart the growth curve of both physical and paradigm shifts and hence can now predict change. By looking at the tools of mankind for example, a plot of tool evolution shows that the tools themselves and on a rapid rate of evolutionary change; in fact on an exponential growth curve. The paradigms have shifted from man the forager, to man the hunter, to man the farmer, to man the manufacturer, to man the knowledge worker, to…

As Cher sings it…’And the beat goes on.’

In terms of understanding mankind we are now dealing with the evolution of genetics, DNA, chromosome charting, and other building blocks of a basic understanding of mankind himself. There is active work at reverse engineering the human brain in progress. The result is artificial intelligence and it too is on an exponential growth curve.

In areas of machine design we are actively using machines to design other and better machines. This is putting us on the cutting edge of controlling mankind’s evolution as we implement genetic engineering and merge man and machine – we are marching towards “The Singularity.”

The Internet is considered a baby step in this evolution yet it is certainly a step that has a huge impact on society. Now the Internet itself is evolving.

One area that is about to be impacted is education. In a situation where man and machine are in close collaboration the main skills need by man are the skills needed to control the machines themselves. Some of the best machines are autonomous such as heart pace-makers and implanted defibrillators. They require little maintenance or intervention. They operate on their own and they keep people alive way beyond our normal life expectancy. They are becoming an integral part of mankind. They are also throw-away units and are themselves in the process of evolving.

Other machines are interactive systems such as the Internet. As we move to the next generation of Internet we see the technology and the media merging along with the delivery systems. Thus TV, radio, newspapers, music, art, and information and knowledge bases are all merging as the Internet evolves. Delivery systems have gone from wire connected desktop units to laptops, to wide area networks, to cell phones, to IPOD’s, and Blackberries. Soon we will have the Internet implant and thus a tie-in to a medical network where we are alarmed and alerted to problems like strokes, before they even happen. After that we will buy add-on modules for monitoring and treating those areas that DNA analysis has shown that we have a genetic weakness in. The Internet is a network and it delivers services and that can include medical services. A network ties us to each other and it ties us to services and services represent economic opportunity. Hence our technology perpetuates and extends itself. 

There is a stereotype promoted today that mankind can’t keep up with the rapid rate of change yet that is clearly nonsense and as when we plot the rate of introduction and acceptance of new leading edge tools and technology we can see that mankind is keeping up very well and is also managing to leverage the new introductions almost as fast as we can invent and engineer them. It seems to be mankind’s institutions that are lagging – such as government and education and thus our moral and ethical spiritual evolution is in lag.

The machines themselves are being empowered to teach us how to use them without people even reading the owners manual as the man-machine interface improves. Will it be long before they compel us in the ethical and moral manner of their use? Think about a gun that will not fire because it senses that a human is being pointed at. We know how to build such a gun today. Should all guns be built that way that are sold to the public? It is the spiritual aspect that is lagging the evolution of the gun.

Yet from Ray Kurzweil’s viewpoint we are taking baby steps in the evolutionary march towards man-machine symbiosis. He says that because of the nature of the exponential growth curve that the time element is now compressing and that the steps taken are larger and that singularity is near.

How near? We are at a point in time where every single year is now bringing important new advances with it and the frequency of change will accelerate even faster.

Kurzweil also points out that the poor and the disadvantaged are not being left behind as some would assert. Somehow they get in on the buzz, they acquire the tools, and they place a cultural imprint onto them. This is certainly true in art and music as urban culture, often arising from the urban ghetto, place technology in motion and place a spiritual bent on the technology itself. “Deus est Machina - God is a machine.”

New technology introductions such as ‘the morning after pill’ are sparking a new wave of sexual revolution that challenges both government and religion.

For Democrats, the writings of Kuzweil are important since they forecast the nature of change itself and we can thus forecast coming wedge issues in our society. It is important to us as a Party that we get out ahead of the change curve and to develop well thought out positions to these coming challenges and help government in assimilating societal change if we want to lead as a Party. Indeed we Democrats are left with only a simple set of choices: “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” The last two choices simply lead to political ignominy. The future of governance could well be a matter of developing and rationalizing these moral and spiritual positions.

So far the GOP, in the form of the Bush Administration, has positioned itself as anti-science and as in a denial of evolution as a life force. The Christian Right has them tied up in moral dilemma and Old Testament knots. Democrats have avoided that trap as Separation of Church and State, as a principle, is serving us well; but we have been broadsided by moral wedge issues well managed by the GOP right-wing as they contest the principal of Separation. It is time now for Democrats to move out ahead of that curve, to forecast coming change, and to develop a wing of our party who are moral ethicists and who give us guidance on managing change for the long-term benefit of governance.

The Singularity Is Near and like ‘The Polar Express,’ we are all onboard for the ride.