The Cybernetic Singularity: When Humankind Transcends Biology
“Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order… I believe that it’s the evolution of patterns that constitutes the ultimate story of our world. Each stage or epoch uses the information-processing methods of the previous epoch to create the next.” -Ray Kurzweil
“To understand is to perceive patterns.” -Isaiah Berlin
About 542 million years ago, something weird and profoundly significant happened on Earth. Quite suddenly, life went insanely inventive, proliferating from simple, rudimentary single-celled organisms into myriad multi-cellular forms. Evolution discovered the idea of more sophisticated and specialized cells, and most of the basic body plans we know today. Biologists call it the Cambrian explosion.
Today, we are on the verge of yet another event of astronomical significance, akin to some kind of Intelligence Supernova, which I refer to as the Cybernetic Singularity, or the Syntellect Emergence. In the scientific community, this upcoming intelligence explosion is also known as the Technological Singularity. Surprisingly enough, most people are…
