SINGULARIA - Provocative New Book

Chapter 2

Singularity

“…the universe will be transformed into exquisitely sublime forms of intelligence, which will constitute the sixth epoch (The Universe Wakes Up) in the evolution of patterns of information. This is the ultimate destiny of the Singularity and of the universe.”

Ray Kurzweil
The Singularity Is Near

The irony of singularity is that there are so many and each wishes to be “the one”.  It is a singularly big topic, with a couple of contenders and several charismatic promoters.  In no particular order there is:

The Singularity, also known as The Technological Singularity, which is what Ray Kurzweil is speaking about in the above quotation, spruking the possibility of advanced machine intelligences to be soon surpassing human consciousness.

This scenario has been popularized as Artificial Intelligence or AI. A concept that has spawned Hollywood blockbusters like The Matrix and Terminator series in asking the question: will our machines still love us when they are smarter and stronger than we are … see also Blade Runner and many other sci-fi dramas…

Singularity has also been used to refer to the possible quantum effect resulting from an exponential growth in the accumulation of information over time. Which is to say that the sum total amount of information in the world has been observed to be doubling at a geometrically accelerating rate. At a certain point in time the speed of doubling goes synchronous; very quickly. That is, it doubles every hour, then every minute, then every second, then … well you get the picture.

This phenomenal event of an instantaneous, yet on-going doubling of information is expected to occur very soon. No one knows what this would mean or can accurately measure it. But we all have a sense of what it feels like as time compresses and the days, weeks and years collapse into a spiral of meta-information, connectivity and novelty.

This observation concerning the geometric growth of data/information is yet another of the contributing theories that informs the urban mythos related to the December 21, 2012 meme. This ubiquitous date has also been speculated to be when the rate of “novelty and change” is estimated and predicted to then go off the charts and we will enter a totally new psychological and metaphysical territory.

The Singularity is also the name given to that theorized infinitesimally tiny and dense object from out of which the universe “expanded” in the unfortunately named “Big Bang Theory”. As creation myths go this physics explanation for the creation of the universe is as wild and crazy as it gets in stretching ones mind in the direction of cosmic possibilities. It also leaves many questions unanswered as to “what, where, how and why” but it does give the best current estimate as to a “when”; some 14 billion earth years ago.

Singularity is also a label for those incredibly dense objects at the centre of spiral galaxies, such as our own Milky Way, called “Black Holes”. These are conceived of as quantum sink holes where even light, gravity and time collapse into an infinitely receding nexus point of unknowable qualities; never to return. Whew! …

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