Time Keeps On Slipping Into The Future

Jump to Comments

I’ve been immersed in a book recently. It’s a fictional story, but it’s based on a lot of scientific fact. A bit like The Matrix or anything in the cyberpunk genre by authors like Neal Stephenson or William Gibson.

Here’s fact A and fact B. You believe they’re true, but perhaps you’ve never thought about whether there’s any linkage. And if you believe that, then it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination for you to believe this… or that perhaps sometime in the near future it will lead to this…

Whether you are drawn down the path depends very much on your personal beliefs, or perhaps to what extent you’re willing to suspend belief.

In this case it’s built on a pretty solid foundation of thought… the work of the Futurists and the idea of a moment of technological Singularity, which is grounded in the work of Ray Kurzweil. Singularity is based on a projection of Moore’s Law (the yearly doubling of available computing power at constant cost) and is the point when technological progress becomes so fast that humans experience it as being instantaneous. At this point artificial intelligence will be not only smarter than any person alive or dead, but will be smarter than every human combined.

That last doubling is going to be a doozy.

You might think that’s a vaguely science fiction concept, but Futurists are plotting it on a graph, and they think it’ll be in about 25 years time. It might be a gentle entry, or it might be something like a “Singularity event”. We put the finishing touches on a super-super-computer and test it for the first time, for example.

The book is Stefan Pernar’s James 5 and it opens a Neil Gaiman quote:

“It goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise in this story are fictional or are used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real.”

The book is licensed under creative commons, so if you’re interested in this kind of thing, surf to his site and pick up a copy.

The fascination with this tipping point is not so much the technology. How far you can shrink chips, how fast you can make them run, that kind of thing. A lot of what occupies Futurists’ thoughts are philosophical issues. What is intelligence? What is humanity? What are the consequences of technology that is, effectively, us. Except much, much smarter, and probably uninhibited by the cumbersome flaws in the body-system we rely on. Could we actually evolve beyond our biology, and what exactly would that mean?

I won’t comment too much on the book because I haven’t finished it yet and it wasn’t my intention to write a book review.

But something struck me this morning. Well, more accurately perhaps, “a thought solidified for me this morning”, because it’s not the first time it’s passed through my head.

The theories Futurism is based on and the ethical questions it raises are fascinating to me. It’s a rabbit hole I could easily go down. There are no shortage of books and websites to read, great thinkers to learn from, paths to follow. Stefan Pernar himself lives in Singapore and has formed a Singapore Futurists Society that meets on Thursdays at a Coffee Bean in Paya Lebar. It combines subjects like technology, the mind, anthropology and philosophy that I’m really fond of.

And yet, I really don’t have the time or the capacity.

When I was a kid I remember I could hook on to anything interesting that came my way and follow it until I lost interest, or something more interesting came my way. I read Lobsang Rampa and Carlos Castenedas, went to a meditation lecture that was all about being beings of the violet light, flitted in and out of Catholicism, discovered the Dalai Lama.

But now the idea of embracing anything bigger than an email is a big decision. Everything has an opportunity cost. In the self actualisation department I’m already involved in my own custom-mixed brand of spiritual exploration, which is a far quieter, more inward and more personal focus than the Futurists’ offer. Add a whole bunch of activities that focus on my art(s), my body, my relationships, learning in a number of different areas and, of course, making a living, and I’m tapped out. I really am. I just don’t have a gap in there to shoehorn anything big into.

Is it just me, or is it the modern malaise? Has Moore’s Law also amped up  the complexity of life to the point now where we have infinite and irresistible opportunities to follow our interests, discover new things and fill our time?

pic: “you are not here” by creativespark (Kandy, Sri Lanka)

5 Comments

Filed under Singapore, Trends, Urban Life

Tags: carlos casteneda, cyberpunk, Futurism, Futurists, james5, lobsang rampa, moore's law, ray kurzweil, Singapore Futurists Society, singularity, spiritualism, spirituality, stefan pernar, technological singularity