Technotopia & the Death of Nature

By James J. Bell, AlterNet. Posted April 16, 2002.

There is no question that technological growth trends in science and industry are increasing exponentially. There is, however, a growing debate about what this runaway acceleration of ingenuity may bring. A number of respected scientists and futurists now are predicting that technological progress is driving the world toward a "Singularity" -- a point at which technology and nature will have become one. At this juncture, the world as we have known it will have gone extinct and new definitions of "life," "nature" and "human" will take hold.

"We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth," San Diego University Professor of Computer Science Vernor Vinge first warned the scientific community in 1993. "Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will end."

Some scientists and philosophers have theorized that the very purpose of life is to bring about the Singularity. While leading technology industries have been aware of the Singularity concept for some time, there are concerns that, if the public understood the full ramifications of the Singularity, they would be reluctant to accept many of the new and untested technologies such as genetically engineered foods, nano-technology and robotics.

Machine Evolution

A number of books on the coming Singularity are in the works and will soon appear. In 2003, the sequel to the blockbuster film The Matrix will delve into the philosophy and origins of Earth's machine-controlled future. Matrix cast members were required to read Wired editor Kevin Kelly's 1994 book Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-biological Civilization. Page one reads, "The realm of the born -- all that is nature -- and the realm of the made -- all that is humanly constructed -- are becoming one."

Meanwhile, Warner Brothers has embarked on the most expensive film of all time -- a $180 million sequel called Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The film is due out in 2003; a good decade before actual machine evolution is predicted to accelerate "out of control," plunging human civilization towards the Singularity.

Central to the workings of the Singularity are a number of "laws" -- one of which is known as Moore's Law. Intel Corp. cofounder Gordon E. Moore noted that the number of transistors that could fit on a single computer chip had doubled every year for six years from the beginnings of integrated circuits in 1959. Moore predicted that the trend would continue, and it has -- although the doubling rate was later adjusted to an 18-month cycle.

Today, millions of circuits are found on a single miniscule computer chip and technological "progress" is accelerating at an exponential rather than a linear growth rate.

Stewart Brand, in his book The Clock of the Long Now, discusses another law -- Monsanto's Law -- which states that the ability to identify and use genetic information doubles every 12 to 24 months. This exponential growth in biological knowledge is transforming agriculture, nutrition and healthcare in the emerging life-sciences industry.

In 2005, IBM plans to introduce "Blue Gene," a computer that can perform one million-billion calculations-per-second -- about 1/20th the power of the human brain. This computer could transmit the entire contents of the Library of Congress in less than two seconds. According to Moore's Law, computer hardware will surpass human brainpower in the first decade of this century. Software that emulates the human mind -- "artificial intelligence" -- may take a few more years to evolve.

Reaching Infinity

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