Sunday, September 12, 2010

Humanities: The Technological Singularity

As we advance technologically as a species, we will approach a singularity. Where Moore's law eventually collapses in on itself as we improve technology, and technology simultaneously improves us creating a feedback loop of sorts. I don't believe anybody can accurately tell when it will happen yet, but as long as we are not annihilated it will eventually happen.

Within about 100 years humanity has advanced a great deal already. In the late 1800's you were considered lucky if you lived past the age of 40. Advances in medicine, public sanitation, as well as electronics (fairly recently) and materials such as plastics has made it not uncommon to see people live well into their 80's or even 90's. Motor vehicles, airplanes, micro-processors, the Internet. All developed roughly within the last 100 years. Every day more amazing advances are being developed.

Our development does have a dark side however, and I'm not talking about the creation of the myriad of ways we blow holes into each other. We are slowly becoming despondent as a species. People spend more time attached to their gadgets, letting our technology do most of the thinking for us. Most of our lives have become digital. I don't consider myself a Luddite, in fact the Internet has opened a huge gateway for us to communicate as a whole. But we must remember that ultimately, we are animals. Evolution did not intend for us to sit down staring at a screen all day. If we continue down this path of letting our own devices constantly distract us from reality we will begin to stagnate as a species.

Feel free to comment, I would like to read other people's views on this topic.

2 comments:

  1. I really wonder where the world is going to. We become to dedicated to other applications that think for us that we do not use our brain for new innovations.

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  2. true that, but we'll deal with the problem as it comes, like we always do ;)

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