[…] by many, and ridiculous by others. There have been some proposing that perhaps the Singularity is already behind us. Maybe so, but that depends on your definition of the Singularity. I don't buy it. One of the […]

@ Luke Maciak:

Be calm, no one is going to die! That is unacceptable. We will have lab grown organs in the next decade or two. That should give us some extra time to wait for true immortality. Though I still hope some mad scientist is going for all that “synthetic organs” routine, replacing my current squishy things with more squishy things doesn’t seem awesome enough :)

@ IceBrain:

Damn, that sucks. I thought that Europe was supposed to be better about this stuff. My mom lives in Poland and her whole neighborhood is blanketed by free municipal wifi. Granted, the service sucks, keeps going down and the speeds suck so much she recently got a DSL line but still – at leas they are trying. And Poland has never really been a fore-runner when it comes to internet coverage.

@ Liudvikas:

Yeah, I kinda playing devils advocate trying to flip things around for the sake of conversation. I’m still hoping for the singularity in the future. :)

@ Tino:

Yeah, that’s what I was saying. We could count the taming of fire, the invention of the wheel, discovery of agriculture and industrial revolution as mini-singularities if we use the lax definition of the term. They all changed the world forever.

Also, thanks for explaining the banana thing :)

@ nitro2k01:

Oh, nice link. This guy does a way better job of making this argument. Love it.

nitro2k01 wrote:

I think it’s fairly safe to predict that the coming 90 years will sort of be the same as the past 10 years.

No, don’t say that. I’m really hoping some shit is gonna change. For example, I want neural implants, direct uplink to the net, universal high wifi bandwidth in urban areas, and wetware inteface that would allow me to have a HUD piped directly into my optical nerves. Please don’t tell me we are not getting that before I die.

Speaking of which, I’m not very keen on dying. I was really hoping that they were gonna fix that stupid aging bullshit in the next like 40 years so. I’m still hoping for a singularity in the future. :)

@ Luke Maciak: With the talk of AI, singularity, and digitized consciousness.. have you ever read the Takeshi Kovacs novels by Richard K Morgan? They paint an interesting future with true AI and digitized minds, but they don’t really go as far as an incomprehensible post-singularity.

PS, I got internal server error’d again. :(
Perhaps some buggy WP plugin?

This guy argues that we were already past the singularity by 1918. In other words, he’s arguing that the singularity was the industrial revolution, plain and simple. I’d like to claim that the singularity stretches almost another century, to about the 1980s-1990s. It’s about that time, I think, you could sit down and for the first time imagine the 21st century (in terms of technology) somewhat accurately, given a sober analysis.

Point is, I, too, think the singularity is behind us. I think, perhaps foolishly, that the rest of the 21st century won’t offer any major breakthroughs, quantum leaps, if you will. Progress, yes, but not breakthroughs. In other words, I think it’s fairly safe to predict that the coming 90 years will sort of be the same as the past 10 years.

It is an interesting thought. I agree that ‘human brain + Internet’ is qualitatively different from ‘bare human brain’, so perhaps the invention of the Internet counts as a “redesign” of our brains.

But if we define the singularity merely as “it makes the future after the singularity qualitatively different and harder to predict.” it seems the human history if full of singularities. Couldn’t your argument be applied to the industrial revolution? For people living before the industrial revolution, life must surely look different afterwards. Who could imagine a world where obesity rather than starvation would be a problem among the lower classes?

@ Liudvikas, @ IceBrain:
The banana is exaplained in this link.

P.P.S. Now I’ve got Deja vu that I already asked that question in the past and somebody answered and now it’s bothering me even more. Screw this stupid thing I call brain!

@ Liudvikas:
http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2010/01/14/what-was-your-fir st-computer/

P.S. It keeps bothering me. What does that icon by my name of a banana with an alt text saying “Terminalist” mean?