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Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near"
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Oct 03, 2005 10:20 AM
from the don't-stop-thinking-about-tomorrow dept.
from the don't-stop-thinking-about-tomorrow dept.
popo writes "The Wall Street Journal has a (publicly accessible) review of "The Singularity is Near" -- a new book by futurist, Ray Kurzweil. By "Singularity", Kurzweil refers not to a collapsed supernova, but instead to an extraordinarily bright future in which technological progress has leapt by such exponentially large bounds that it will be... well, for lack of a better word: 'utopian'. "Mr. Kurzweil... thinking exponentially, imagines a plausible future, not so far away, with extended life-spans (living to 300 will not be unusual), vastly more powerful computers (imagine more computing power in a head-sized device than exists in all the human brains alive today), other miraculous machines (nanotechnology assemblers that can make most anything out of sunlight and dirt) and, thanks to these technologies, enormous increases in wealth (the average person will be capable of feats, like traveling in space, only available to nation-states today)." On one hand its fantastically (even ridiculously) optimistic, but on the other hand, I sure as hell hope he's right." Got mailed a review copy; I'm not finished yet, but I agree - optimistic perhaps, but the future does look pretty interesting.
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Hardware: Handheld Device Reads Printed Words to the Blind 110 comments
geekotourist writes "3,000 people in Dallas this week for the National Federation of the Blind convention are getting a demonstration of what life is like when you can read printed menus, mail, business cards and memos," reports the Dallas Morning News. The NFB spent two million dollars developing the $3,495 Kurzweil-National Federation of
the Blind Reader, which weighs 15 ounces and combines text-to-speech with sophisticated OCR. The device 'gives the user an initial "situation report," describing what it can see. The user then makes a decision about whether to take a picture. After a few seconds to process the image, the contents of the document are read aloud.' Beta testers describe the joys of reading receipts, CDs, food labels, bulletin boards, conference printouts, or of simply reading books with privacy, without another person's help."
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Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trust me, utopia will be sucky too, such is the vastness of human desire.
Exactly. Without a significant shift in human cultures any utopia cannot happen, whether we have the technology or not. We could never agree on what utopia should be like, and would fight about it.
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Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Funny)
Not unless that Utopia involves virtualization so that everyone could simulate their own Utopia based on whatever they felt should be the case... Then let the robots deal with the problems of the real world. You know that would make a good movie... Oh wait...
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Re:Where would we be if humans were satisfied w/ n (Score:5, Funny)
Utopia.
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Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Insightful)
Regards,
Steve
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Re:My utopia (Score:5, Insightful)
The more that becomes available the more that they want and as all ways the only way to achieve this is by taking it from everybody else. When you have 10 million why strive for 100 million and then for 1000 million and then for 10,000 million etc. , regardless of how much harm they do to society in achieving those petty goals.
Even when the real measure of their achievment is the harm and disruption that they cause to society as a result of their individual greed and their need to have more than anybody else (the celebrated sociopath). Of course the internet might yet create a change as we do get the oppurtunity to mock those individuals regardless of the amount of money that they can spend on self promoting PR, they need to because deep down the guilt and shame are still there (hello bog balls ballmer and wee willie gates ;-)).
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Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is only the environment that changed in the past 100 years not peoples lives. Just take the following basic stuff: love, work, power, friendship, kids, getting old, etc. Now people have the same problems, or similar problems in different context. Technology does not really change our lives, it changes only the circumstances.
Just like hoping to get your favourite pancake in a nicer packaging next year. Lets say easier to open box, instant delivery... is there anyone out there believing this would mean a significant change in his life? Yes, unfortunately...
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Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Interesting)
Things are much better today, but not every step is a step forward from the individual's point of view.
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Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea we still have thousands of children with Polio in Ironlungs...
Actually the world is a pretty good place in most developed countries. It is even a lot better than it was 50 years ago in the developing countries.
The correct way to look at it is not that the present sucks, but how can we make the future better.
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Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Insightful)
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WSJ Writer is Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit Fame (Score:5, Informative)
HULK's Halloween decorations webcam is up! [komar.org]
Optimisim sells... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's just ONE innovation. A major innovation that brought so many changes that we can tell right away it is revolutionary. Even if in 30 or 40 years, the internet is a thing of the past, some other new type of network will emerge to replace it. The internet changed our way of life so much that we can hardly imagine living without it, IMHO.
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Re:Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. To produce mechanical power
2. To intelligently apply that mechanical power
The former reason is why so many ancient civilizations used slaves. Being able to generate about 200kWs (~500kWs burst) of power may not seem like much, but if you put enough people together you can power ships, lift boulders, hammer out the sides of mountains, and other laborous activities.
Obviously, animals of burden can provide much more power than humans, but they often fail the latter need. i.e. You can yoke an animal and ask it to move forward, but you'll have a hard time getting it to assemble something for you. That's why humans are still necessary. They know how to apply power.
Today, computers and robotics combined with various power generation techniques have allowed us to manage both requirements with great success. For example, much of the construction of a car is repetitive work. Create a proper computer program and a robot can do the work faster and cheaper.
That's why there's an ever shrinking lower-class population. The focus has gone from doing the work to providing tools and maintenence to do the work. This has placed the majority of the population in a better position than before. A side effect of this "nearly everyone is middle class" change is that more tools can be produced. More tool production means that more work can be done. More work translates directly into more goods and cheaper prices.
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Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:4, Insightful)
But eventually, the world (be it earth or all planets we might make habitable) will be filled with immortal people, unable to procreate because there is no more room nor resources for more people. They will be doomed to either continue living with the same people eternally, kill each other, or commit suicide. No thanks.
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Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:5, Insightful)
But eventually, the world (be it earth or all planets we might make habitable) will be filled with immortal people, unable to procreate because there is no more room nor resources for more people. They will be doomed to either continue living with the same people eternally, kill each other, or commit suicide. No thanks.
We will miss you.
What's wrong with having the same people around "eternally"?
There's... what? Six billion of us? Even if you figure that more than half of those people are assholes, that's still almost three billion people worth having as friends. It would take a long time to get acquainted with them all (and sift them out from said assholes.) Just learning all the languages we would need to learn to all talk to each other fluently would take one or two of what we used to consider lifetimes.
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Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:4, Interesting)
Would you rather live in a *Logan's Run* civilization where you have to be "renued" at the ripe age of 30? (yes, I realize the age was lower in the book).
And oh my....the tyranny to live under the rule of someone who has lived a long time. Seems like that's what we tolerate today here in the U.S. under the Constitution.
I also think there are several figures from the 18th Century that could easily function in the 21st (and later) and our society would be better if they still lived. I'm thinking about Ben Franklin and Voltaire in particular.
Militarily, just imagine if the military minds of Julius Caesar, Alexander and Cromwell held commanded in today's battlefields.
Your post really discredits people from the past and cheapens their individual contributions.
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Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:4, Insightful)
Code-wise, picture if the old COBOL programmers today were kept in the workforce for another dozen decades. I think it's a shame that a langauge as old as my father is still being used by my father at his age. Likewise, if I'm using C++ when I'm nearing 50.
Old -> legacy -> entrenchment... The only escape is when cost(refractoring_to_new) cost(maintaining_old)... Which is starting to happen in the case of COBOL due to the aging of that generation...
Not to say that old things are bad, it's just that they typically were solutions for their day. Picture this, one day (probably within our lifetimes), people might look at Java as an efficient language. It sounds kinda funny to us. But go back 30 years and tell an assembly programmer that C is efficient.
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Dear Science (Score:4, Funny)
Get on it. I was promised one more than 50 years ago.
Re:Dear Science (Score:5, Funny)
Get on it. I was promised one more than 50 years ago.
Dear Public,
We'll deliver you your flying car once you show you can handle the responsibility. They aren't a toy, you know. And your current record with wheeled cars frankly doesn't inspire confidence. Maybe next year.
All the best,
Science
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Re:Dear Science (Score:5, Funny)
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The problems of today... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at Russia. Rampant alcholism, suicide, murder, gansterism, etc. Yet it is perfectly capable of sending off spaceships and creating high level technology.
I appreciate and welcome all the anticpated advances- but unless we create a worldwide civil society that is robust, honest, and representative; it won't make a dime's worth of difference.
Re:The problems of today... (Score:5, Insightful)
We've got lots of really cool stuff now, but much of our economy is still based on scarcity. Energy is not free, and the people who control the methods of production have a lot of influence. And so they want to keep it that way. The same thing is true of many raw materials.
But even more than that, there's the labor issue. I don't think anybody's personal utopia involves spending all day out in the sun building roads, but we require that a whole lot of people do that, and other crappy jobs, because it's the only way we have to get it done. The fact that some jobs are crappier than others creates some weird social layering. If there comes a point in the future where we could have machinery efficiently do all those jobs, then things can probably change.
But yeah, it won't be easy, it won't just magically happen because of any particular invention. But technology will continue to make it more likely.
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The summary isnt really true (Score:5, Informative)
Kurzweil is not an optimist (Score:5, Funny)
Optimist: "That glass is half full."
Kurzweil: "The self-cloning milk in that glass will replicate thanks to nanobots and end world hunger."
Re:Kurzweil is not an optimist (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you a secret: The world produces enough food to feed everyone.
But some of that food is fed to livestock to create other food (which isn't an efficient task). And a lot of food doesn't get to where its going because of corrupt governments and economic factors.
Which is probably the problem right there -- we have the technology to make the world a pretty nice place. But we don't. Magical future technology is unlikely to change our behavior.
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Re:Kurzweil is not an optimist (Score:4, Interesting)
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Sounds like he has read ... Iain M Banks (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually it sounds also like Robert Heinlein, Asimov and most other Sci-Fi writers I've ever read. But mostly like Iain M Banks who books are a cracking read.
Living to 300... of course we will, we'll have to work till we are 280 though.
Kurzweil is dead wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The accompanying graph is staggering but only shows five points of data. Its top point shows a life expectancy of 77 years in 1999 or so, which of course is not human life expectancy. Human life expectancy is about 65, ranging from about 43 in poor countries to 79 in the richest country. Kurzweil's statement only applies to the wealthy; in much of Africa, life expectancy fell dramatically during the 1990s.
And since he's clearly talking about life extension, the reader should be aware that there is no exponential curve at the top of the lifespan. His numbers gained mostly from improvements in child nutrition and antibiotics, and there aren't any continued improvements to be made in those (quite the opposite, actually). If we look at the average continued life expectancy for Americans aged 75, between 1980 and 1985 they gained 0.2 years; 1985-1990, 0.3 years; 1990-1995, 0.1 years; 1995-2000, 0.4 years; 1997-2002, 0.3 years. This is good. But it's not exponential lengthening of lifespan.
Oh, and the "decade" within which he promised we'd be ahead of the curve is now half over. The above quote is from 2000.
The main logical error Kurzweil makes is simply that he thinks computers will get smarter because they get faster. Readers who believe the one has anything to do with the other need to go back to Dreyfus' 1972 classic What Computers Can't Do. From there, start reading over the painful history of what is now called "strong A.I.", and what used to be just called "A.I.", to see how necessarily limited our efforts have become. Kurzweil elides over this distinction in the worst way. He starts by saying that computers are now as smart as an insect -- which is unrefutable because nobody can quantify what that means -- and proceeds to predicting that they will be as smart as people once they get n times faster. No, I'm sorry, all that means is that they will be as smart as n insects. Whatever the hell that means.
Mostly I wouldn't care. Fantasy is fun. Except that Pollyannaish predictions of paradise-yet-to-come persuade people that the problems we create for ourselves are irrelevant. If you think the Rapture or the Singularity is going to make all currently conceivable problems laughable, little things like massive extinction and global warming turn into somebody else's problem. They're not -- and our grandchildren, with their very fast and non-sentient computers, and their non-300-year lifespans, are going to be kind of ticked that you and I spoiled the planet.
Needs (Score:5, Insightful)
So if we can make computers that can actually think well enough to do the design, then getting design done faster just requires better computers. I think it's safe to assume that computers will continue to increase in power. Whether or not they'll become "intelligent" is harder to predict, but lets say for the sake of the singularity that they do.
We also need plentiful energy. If this whole fusion power thing ever pans out, we'll have that.
Raw materials are a little harder. Making things just out of dirt is a bit simplistic. because there's lots of different minerals and such present in dirt, and they're not all suitable for any purpose. There's lots of stuff available in the earth, but extracting it, even if it becomes easy, will most likely be rather destructive. The solution is to make spaceflight reliable enough that we can mine other places, asteroids and the like.
Although that seems to me to be a short term solution, because most things in space are pretty far away. Unless there's some sort of major star trek-ish breakthrough in propulsion, it's never going to be all that simple.
I guess the point is, design and energy are almost like a switch. Either we'll have a couple big breakthroughs that'll bust those two wide open, or we won't. But even if we got cheap brains and cheap energy, the raw materials issue seems like it'd be a harder problem. If you're looking for a long term investment, land would probably be a good one, because it's the hardest thing for us to make more of.
But this is really Vernor Vinge's idea (Score:4, Informative)
BTW, for those who (like me) had always pronounced "Vinge" to rhyme with "hinge", according to Vinge himself it rhymes with "dingy".
Perhaps Heresy on Slashdot, BUT... (Score:5, Insightful)
It didn't happen.
Fast forward to the 1970's at the advent of the personal computer revolution and read magazines like "Byte" or similiar. The coming of age of the PC was to free us from mundane tasks, make work easier, give us more leisure time because things were simpler.
That did not happen either, even if Byte and others were correct in saying that the computer revolution was here to stay.
There is a truism in regards to technology: when something is made easier to do, more of it is expected to be done.
Or, if you prefer, back to the PC analogy: PC's have made things like spreadsheets, memos, etc., far easier for the average office worker, but instead of being rewarded with more leisure time, more spreadsheets and memos etc. are expected instead. In other words, instead of making life easier, more work has been created and now we are more or less enslaved to the technology that it is done on.
History is rife with examples of this: cellphones, for example. Now you cannot get away and work goes with you everywhere, all too often 24/7. Enslaved to the never-ending communication, instead of better, we got more.
George Santayna said those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. True. And history here will repeat itself. Technology will make things easier, and when they are easier it will be expected that more of it will be done.
And, as anyone who has sat on a beach with only a cool drink and the waves to contemplate, more work, no matter how "easy" is not Utopia.
Re:Perhaps Heresy on Slashdot, BUT... (Score:5, Insightful)
We aren't enslaved by our technology or our employers. We're enslaved by our own shallow, greedy, workaholic culture.
Our employers call us at home and have us bring our work home on company-provided laptops because we, as a society, let them do it.
Nay, we ask for it. Our obsessive need to have everything we buy cost less is what forces companies to start forcing us to do things like working unpaid overtime.
We're enslaving ourselves for valuing TVs that we don't have the time to watch and luxury cars that we will love for a week and then spend the rest of our lives associating with the two hours' worth of heavy traffic that we use them to experience every day. You're not a victim of the march of technology, you're not even a victim of your boss (remember, you agreed to take the job). You're just a victim of rampant materialism.
Think I'm just being some sort of hippie idealist? Well, chew on this: lately studies have been consitently showing that, once you get past the poverty line, personal satisfaction and happiness are negatively correlated with income.
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Links, history of Singularity (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-s ing.html [caltech.edu]
http://singinst.org/what-singularity.html [singinst.org]
http://www.accelerationwatch.com/ [accelerationwatch.com]
And let's not forget:
http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/search.pl?query=Sin gularity [justfuckinggoogleit.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singula rity [wikipedia.org]
The first person to use the term "Singularity" as applied to futurism was John von Neumann, and he used it to mean a disruptive change in the future brought about by a high level of technology.
The first person to postulate that recursive self-improvement in Artificial Intelligence would rapidly produce "ultraintelligent machines" was the Bayesian statistician I. J. Good. Today this is known as the "hard takeoff" scenario.
The first person to popularize the term "Singularity", referring to the breakdown in our model of the future which occurs subsequent to the (technological) creation of smarter-than-human intelligence, was the mathematician (and sometime SF author, and inventor of cyberspace) Vernor Vinge.
Kurzweil's "Singularity" belongs to the accelerating change crowd that includes John Smart. Their thesis is, first, that history shows a trend for major transitions to happen in shorter and shorter times, and second, that you can graph this on log charts, get reasonably straight lines, and extend the lines to produce useful quantitative predictions. I agree with the qualitative thesis but not the quantitative thesis.
In my opinion, Kurzweil could greatly strengthen many of his arguments by giving up on the attempt to predict when these things will occur, and just saying: "They will happen eventually." I think that it is just as important, and a great deal more probable, to say: "Eventually we will be able to create Artificial Intelligence surpassing human intelligence, and then XYZ will happen, so we better get ABC done first." Than to say: "And this will all happen on October 15th, 2022, between 7 and 7:30 in the morning."
Since I don't care particularly about when someone builds a smarter-than-human intelligence, just what happens after that, and what we need to get done before; and since I don't think that this necessarily needs to make life incomprehensible, so long as we do things right; I belong to the I.J. Good "hard takeoff" crowd. With a strong helping of Vernor Vinge, because I think there's a difference in kind associated with a future that contains mind smarter than human, which we do not get just from talking about flying cars, or space travel, or even nanotechnology.
On Slashdot, someone says "intelligence" and you think of all the computer CEOs with IQs of 120 and the starving professors with IQs of 160, and you think that means intelligence isn't important. But you will not find many excellent CEOs, nor professors, nor soldiers, nor artists, nor musicians, nor rationalists, nor scientists, who are chimpanzees. Intelligence is the foundation of human power, the strength that fuels our other arts. Respect it. When someone talks about enhancing human intelligence or building smarter-than-human AI, pay attention. That is what matters to the future, not political yammering, not our little nation-tribes. In 200 million years nobody's going to give a damn who flew the first flying car or
This is pretty far-fetched... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mega Rich (Score:5, Insightful)
I really have no idea why people keep holding to this idea. The "super mega ultra rich" are by no means the powerhouse they once were. Today's society instead revolves around the needs of the middle class. If the middle class will be unable to afford it in the near future, the "super mega ultra rich" aren't going to be able to afford it (or even have it available) now.
Sure, the "super mega ultra rich" can afford nicer stuff than you and I, but they certainly don't have much that you and I don't have. A quick comparison list:
They have -> We have
Expensive Sports Car -> Affordable Sports Car
$3000 Cell Phone -> $0-$500 Cell Phone
Jet Plane -> Cessna
Mansion -> Spacious Home
Ming Vase -> A Vase that you can use
The world isn't what it was in the time of H.G. Wells. I seriously doubt you'll be seeing the "poor" eating the "rich" anytime soon.
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Re:Mega Rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up. You're upper class. We will eat you.
*cough* so... yeah, crazy weather lately, eh?
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Re:Mega Rich (Score:5, Funny)
Expensive Sports Car -> Affordable Sports Car -> A 1984 Ford Ares
$3000 Cell Phone -> $0-$500 Cell Phone -> $0.35/minute payphone
Jet Plane -> Cessna -> Sometimes when I'm in my cubical I put out my arms and make airplane noises
Mansion -> Spacious Home -> Small 1 bedroom apartment next door to noisy @ssholes
Ming Vase -> A Vase that you can use -> No vase, but no plants so who cares
Private doctors -> public HMO -> My health plan: don't get sick (thanks to both Clinton and Bush)
Hot women -> fat women -> blind women
Electric heat -> Gas heat -> I just have gas
Gold plated Mozart records -> vynil Beatles records -> police record
Privacy -> a false sense of security -> run, Forest, run
Celebrity friends -> friends -> a socket puppet
Huge income, lots of time off -> modest income, unpaid overtime -> No income, lots of time off
Sex in a private jacuzzi -> sex in the community pool -> sex at the zoo (and not with other patrons)
Dashing good looks -> good hegine -> the roaches I live with are disgusted by me
Vote Republican -> vote Democrat -> Voted for the rabbit to get the tricks
Plays golf -> plays bowling -> plays with himself
Bogus diploma from Harvard/Yale because daddy is a major contributor -> diploma from community college -> Ph.D. in mathematics and computer science (yeah kids, stay in school)
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Re:Mega Rich (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Mega Rich (Score:4, Interesting)
Vase [galasource.com]
You can purchase [google.com] a used Cessna for ~$20,000-$50,000, or you can build one [zenithair.com] for ~$20,000. You'd probably get a bank loan similar to your car loan, but you may be able to stretch the loan for a longer period than a car. (Planes usually last at least 20 years. With good care on the airframe, it can last two to three times that.)
Which isn't to say that you should run out and get a plane. Many people (myself included) don't have sports cars either, despite the fact that they can afford them. Only bother with a plane if you actually want to fly.
As for the vase... I take it you're not married?
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Re:Semi-topical link. (Score:5, Insightful)
I shouldn't think so. Whenever singularities appear in any model of the real world, it generally means a breakdown of the model. So this singularity means an acceleration of technological advance to a point where our ability to forecast breaks down and we really can't say what will happen.
A singularity would have it that we get ever-accelerating advance, heading skyward to infinity at some finite time. I dislike, therefore, forecasts that the singularity will bring utopia. It need not. The singularity could very easily bring extinction. It could bring hell on earth. It could bring a tyranny beyond the dreams of 1984, in which no proletarian revolt could ever succeed because we've all got Seven Minute Specials waiting to go off inside us. To be quite honest, I think our best hope is extinction, but leaving successors - which is, let's face it, the best hope of any species that there ever was. In addition, I don't mind whether this means our genetically enhanced, cybernetic, hyperevolved biological descendants, or our superintelligent quantum-computing AI offspring. What do I care about DNA, after all? A sentient robot I might build is as much my offspring as a human child I might father.
I agree with the concept of the singularity - there are advances coming whose impact on society we won't be able to predict until it happens - but not that it will necessarily be good.
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The stuff you have is even more fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
Your computer will be roughly 1,000 faster than what you're using today. You will probably have more than 4,000 times the memory, and a fast hard drive that stores over 100,000 times as much as that floppy you're using. You can buy these supercomputers for less than $500 at Wal-Mart.
That computer will be hooked into a self-directed network that was designed by the Department of Defense and various universities - along with nearly 400,000,000 other machines. Your connection to this network will be 10,000 times faster than the 300 baud modem you're using. In fact, it will be fast enough to download high-quality sound and video files in better than realtime.
There will be a good chance that your computer's operating system will have been written by a global team of volunteers, some of them paid by their employers to implement specific parts. Free copies of this system will be available for download over the hyperfast network. You will have free access to the tools required to make your own changes, should you want to.
You will use this mind-bendingly powerful system to view corporate sponsored, community driven messages boards where people will bitch about having to drive cars that are almost unimaginably luxurious compared to what you have today.
Remember: in some fields, the singularity has already happened.
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Re:The stuff you have is even more fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just copyrights, either. Patents are getting a shake-down, and remember when people had trademarks instead of google rankings?
Remember when there were corporations dedicated to providing 'news'? Remember when people who uncovered some secret, global spanning government conspiracy would race to mail it to a trusted person, or a newpaper reporter, and hope they didn't end up dead, instead of just posting it on the net and everyone knowing about it one hundred and twenty seconds later when their RSS feeds updated?
Remember when there was a lot of information out there, like mapping phone numbers to addresses or the location of secret government installations in the middle of nowhere, and it was hard to find? Remember that? When we knew information existed, yet couldn't immediately find it?
There used to be buildings you could go to to find out who was the king of England in 1293, and what the capital of Chad is, and who pitched the first recorded no-hitter in MLB. (Edward I, N'Djamena, and Nixey Callahan, which I looked up in less than one minute.) I think they were called 'liberbies' or something. Rememeber when you used to have to go to them?
If any industry starts spinning wildly for no apparent reason, with pieces flying off left and right, it's probably in the middle of a singularity.
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Re:The stuff you have is even more fantastic (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember: in some fields, the singularity has already happened.
The point of the singularity idea is that advancement is going to get so fast that we can't keep track of it, control it or predict what life will be like afterwards. None of that has been true about computing yet.
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Re:If we don't run out of oil first... (Score:5, Insightful)
The bottom line is that we're working on efficiency and cost improvements to all of these technologies and making a gradual transition over to using them. If the oil situation gets serious, we'll accelerate our conversion.
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