Episode Details

One reason lots of people don't want to think long term these days is because technology keeps accelerating so rapidly, we assume the world will become unrecognizable in a few years and then move on to unimaginable. Long-term thinking must be either impossible or irrelevant. The commonest shorthand term for the runaway acceleration of technology is "the Singularity"--a concept introduced by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge in 1984. The term has been enthusiastically embraced by technology historians, futurists, extropians, and various trans-humanists and post-humanists, who have generated variants such as "the techno-rapture," "the Spike," etc. It takes a science fiction writer to critique a science fiction idea. Along with being one of America's leading science fiction writers and technology journalists, Bruce Sterling is a celebrated speaker armed with lethal wit. His books include _The Zenith Angle_ (just out), _Hacker Crackdown_ , _Holy Fire_ , _Distraction_ , _Mirrorshades_ (cyberpunk compendium), _Schismatrix_ , _The Difference Engine_ (with William Gibson), _Tomorrow Now_ , and _Islands in the Net_. The Seminar About Long-term Thinking on June 10-11 was Bruce Sterling examining "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole." He treated the subject of hyper-acceleration of technology as a genuine threat worth alleviating and as a fond fantasy worth cruel dismemberment. Sterling noted that the first stating of the Singularity metaphor and threat came from John Von Neuman in the 1950s in conversation with Stan Ulam--"the rate of change in technology accelerates until it is mind-boggling and beyond social control or even comprehension." But it was science fiction writer Vernor Vinge who first published the idea, in novels and a lecture in the early 1980s, and it was based on the expectation of artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence. Vinge wrote: "I believe that the creation of greater than human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030." Vinge was not thrilled at the prospect. The world-changing event would happen relatively soon, it would be sudden, and it would be irrevocable. "It's an end-of-history notion," Sterling drawled, "and like most end-of-history notions, it is showing its age." It's almost 2005, and the world is still intelligible. Computer networks have accelerated wildly, but water networks haven't--in fact we're facing a shortage of water. The Singularity feels like a 90s dot-com bubble idea now--it has no business model. "Like most paradoxes it is a problem of definitional systems involving sci-fi handwaving around this magic term 'intelligence.' If you fail to define your terms, it is very easy to divide by zero and reach infinite exponential speed." It was catnip for the intelligentsia: "Wow, if we smart guys were more like we already are, we'd be godlike." Can we find any previous Singularity-like events in history? Sterling identified three--the atomic bomb, LSD, and computer viruses. The bomb was sudden and world changing and hopeful--a new era! LSD does FEEL like it's world changing. Viruses proliferate exponentially on the net. LSD is pretty much gone now. Mr. Atom turned out to be not our friend and has blended in with other tools and problems. Singularity proponents, Sterling observed, are organized pretty much like virus writers--loose association, passionate focus, but basically gentle. (They'd be easily rounded up.) "They don't have to work very hard because they are mesmerized by the autocatalyzing cascade effect. 'Never mind motivating voters, raising funds, or persuading the press; we've got a mathematician's smooth line on a 2D graph! Why bother, since pretty soon we'll be SUPERHUMAN. It's bound to happen to us because we are EARLY ADAPTERS.'" Vernor Vinge wrote: "For me, superhumanity is the essence of the Singularity. Without that we would get a glut of technical riches, never properly absorbed.