"Advent of the Singularity"      

By Jonathan McGregor Bethel     

Humankind has developed to the point where its technological evolution is going to become autonomous and progress by its own directive, that is, our technological momentum is about to make the leap from a linear progression to an exponential, multiplicative progression in the blink of an eye! This “Event Horizon” is called a “Technological Singularity” because all mathematical models utilized to predict our technological development break down at this moment, and they cease to give us a clear picture of what might lie beyond it. This moment will herald the liberation of consciousness from its current confinement and imprisonment in human biology, allowing us to utilize immense computational capacity far beyond the biological brain and to interact directly with computer sentience.

Actually, our technological development has been experiencing exponential growth for some time; however, at the beginning of any exponential growth curve, changes are very slight and nearly imperceptible, appearing very much like basic linear growth. Regardless of how slow this process starts off, as the rapidly expanding growth curve deepens, immense changes to the system become exceedingly apparent, and then it then strikingly and abruptly mutates.

Two technological fields will become the baseboard from which the “Technological Singularity” will spring, Strong Artificial Intelligence and Amplification of Human Intelligence. These two fields are currently thought to be the substratum from which a singularity will emerge. Although, neither one of these fields can be taken in isolation; for in all truth, the singularity will be caused by a cascading effect brought about by a rapid inflation of nanotechnology, strong a.i., self replicating machines, amplification of human intelligence, cyber technology, biotechnology, FTL-technology(faster then light tech), etc…