Most everyone in our line of work is (or at least should be) familiar with the book “The Singularity Is Near” by Ray Kurzweil, a 652-page tomb with the body of it ending at page 490, the rest containing Appendix and Notes. His focus, so it seems at first, is the equation of a human-scale Successful relationship when working with machines. This is reflected in the numerous charts and graphs that are showing this “knee” where the rate of change is a likely surprise for the majority of us — because we, in our species-form, are not quite free of seeing things beyond what is incremental — what is successive, what follows one thing after another.
We might reflect on our early days inn the African veldt. Our emerging mind being so caught-up in what’s coming at us next that it had little time to develop a long range view — what is really a necessity for organization — self-organizing included. It is a sad fact that people, the majority, will only see the future when and if Someone-else, a particular leader with a certain bent being the usual pick, has both Seen the-future and Approved. So long as there is a recognized vision for a mind-set that will cover most of the eventualities, most will be OK with any program the leader will come up with. For each member of a chosen group will then have their job to do.
Even with the author’s TED appearance; there was an abundance of graphs and charts showing us the exponential growth of things. In no way do we mean to criticize this approach, especially since the conviction and persuasive levels were so highly felt when catching what he delivered! But we are thinking that there is something more to this growth business, and perhaps it isn’t enough to focus our attention on defining the coming changes by seeing the progress through what has gone before. But it should also be noted that the rest of his book makes it clear where many of the possibilities lie.
Most all of his graphs are showing the logarithmic scale, many of the time-lines so depicted covering many, many years. It seems though that the scale itself has little of the ’sticky’ about it. Why else do we all look back with such surprise when seeing where the huge multiples are leading us to? whatever the progression might be. There is a lot of 20/20 hindsight with this view, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but with an exposition that will use insights at this level there is often a need for a recognized for authority; it is not something that prepares a person to understand the coming changes. We can evaluate charts and diagrams, which we have to do if only for a picture that is useful for the grown-ups show & tell, but there’s not enough for a firm handle on catching where we might take things, not enough for us to be sharing with another person, meme wise.
An early quote from the book…
From my perspective, the Singularity has many faces. It represents the nearly vertical phase of exponential growth that occurs when the rate is so extreme that technology appears to be expanding at infinite speed. Of course, from a mathematical perspective, there is no discontinuity, no rupture, and the growth rates remain finite, although extraordinarily large. But from our currently limited framework, this imminent event appears to be an acute and abrupt break in the continuity of progress. I emphasize the word “currently” because one of the salient implications of the Singularity will be a change on the nature of our ability to understand. We will become vastly smarter as we merge with our technology.
From Division comes Something to Count
An argument can be made for more than one Singualrity, the first one being a-person, a life. There is a consciousness that will stand up in a given environment. I am alive … Whatever happens next is all due to him or her (and me and you) being here, living here, living now. It can be made more complex … but so what? From our youth onwards, we will all devise things, from creations to rationales, to whatever else works; but a-life itself remains the basis for all other understandings (and the reference is to conscious life, life with an “I” in how its identity is made real, made a “Self”, never a worm-shaped life or other such form!). We include the whole of the created universe in the realized existence. We all need our ground to stand on, and being thankful for all of it is right up there, at the edge of consciousness for every individual.
Now the second Singularity, it might be argued (and just for the fun of it), is an individual’s relationship with any one of their tools. Anything, anything at all that is used for a purpose is an extension of the body and nervous system, and thus it can be called a tool that will have an interface, in the modern sense. It should not be that difficult to define — and trace what is left behind through time and artifacts — the tracks from their passage through a life. Many of these may be a part of the historical record (which itself is usually parsed, from the ‘history’ of a days journey to the nature of a process, the steps, of getting through a plan or a recipe), or simply stuck to the machine/interface itself. Whatever connections we make, each of them will be tied in some way to how we go about facilitating things, with each of us unique, whether successful or not in our attempts to achieve something. When carrying a process to completion there is a story here and it might be made visible. It might be seen clearly enough to note a projection, a direction and future tracks. Predictable in other words.
It is not just things with moving parts that are ending up making-a-machine; automation is more of an additional complexity, not the definition. How we reach and grasp, and all of the other actions we engage, in this oh so very real world, are mostly aided and strengthened by the choices we make … when defining our tool-sets. And these are machines in the greater sense of the term. Within our grasp are some new tool/machines; what used to be just ‘our footwear’ will soon enough have an interface. And it is just such an interface, considering the way it will mediate and differentiate between our biological selves and our digital connections, that will tie and link us, in our individual ways, to others. Whatever we might do on a network, or the Internet, is joined by what our person does — one moment after another.
May we suggest a slight change to Kurzweil’s book title; “The Third Singularity Is Near”?
Links:
The book has a website, and so too does the author with his many interests. All of this material is pretty important. (I don’t quite ‘get’ the cover for the book. We can see it “improved” with an Asimov inspired robot that is standin in a forest glade smelling a rose, a Pterodactyl flying by.)
Another book, “Technology Matters: Questions To Live With” by David E. Nye is a good book that puts the whole of technology In Context. Reading it right along with the Singularity is a pleasure.
And “Cool Tools” by Kevin Kelly has a lot of great stuff when it comes to these matters. See his “The Technium” for another fine-way to view things about tools.