From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Sun Sep 03 2000 - 23:33:43 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Atkins" <brian@posthuman.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 10:14 PM
Subject: Re: Simplify! A modest proposal...
> Either that or he let his domain get hacked
Okay, Brian, here's the text version:
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What is the Singularity? Some 10 to 140 years from now-depending on which
computer scientist, futurist, or systems theorist you happen to agree with-human
culture will enter the "blowup" phase of its million-year history of incessant
exponential informational growth, involving a sharp "transition" to "runaway
complexity" that will quickly create a future vastly different from present
society. Some even say that this future will be "entirely unintelligible" to
current-era humans - though we disagree.
Most importantly, arguments about the "sigmoidal nature" ("S curves") of
biological growth and the "crash phases" of growth in populations do not apply
to information as an entity, because information is not matter dependent. It
always figures out ever-more-clever ways to rearrange itself using less space,
less energy, and less resources during evolution (just think of the history of
computers, and you will understand that this applies to technological as well as
biological evolution). Thus the evolution of information involves the continuous
movement to new substrates, with emergent forms always exponentially increasing
their information processing pace over the history of the Universe.
Vernor Vinge first used the word "Singularity" (a concept with analogous
implications in physics and mathematics) to describe this phenomenon beginning
in 1982, and in recent years the term been adopted by a growing number of
Internet futurists.
Many estimates place the transition to the Singularity as early as 2020 to 2030.
If they are right, this is definitely not an issue we can leave for future
generations. It is our responsibility to understand, to plan for, and to manage
these events as ethically as we can, and to educate our children on their
significance.
The last 50 years have clearly shown exponentially increasing growth in the
influence of information processing technologies on human society. The part of
the story that is now becoming clear is that this growth must always continue to
accelerate, due to Universal dynamics just beginning to be scientifically
understood. Thus the Singularity will be the central theme of our lives in the
21st century, and increasingly recognized in the public consciousness.
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Just Who Is a Singularity Watcher? A "Singularity Watcher" is not necessarily
convinced (or happy!) that the Singularity is going to happen, but they also don
't want to be caught off-guard by the wide-ranging social effects of
ever-more-powerful changes in computation. Even if they anticipate that the
Singularity speculation may be correct, they know that human beings do not
easily model exponential change, and that we will need to work together closely
to help each other understand the forces at work, and to make better personal
and societal decisions as we manage the transition in the most moral manner
possible.
Hence this list, whose aim is to do its own part to help us all educate
ourselves on the relevant issues, as the winds of change continue to rush at us
ever faster each day for the rest of our lives. Due to inherent Universal
processes related to the nature of growth in complexity, computation, and
information, ours is the first human generation that will soon be utterly,
absolutely, and constantly overwhelmed by change. This list (and eventually,
this site) will try to be one important tool to help you investigate those
processes, and to provide balance and perspective as you navigate the storm.
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The Teacher Who Runs This Site My name is John Smart, and I've been
researching and writing about these issues full time for about a year now, and
plan to continue to do so for the rest of my life. I also have a ten year
background in private education, so I am very interested in educating the
general public in these topics. So far, one book has been published on the
coming Singularity, Damien Broderick's The Spike. I am currently writing a
second book on this topic. This work is now nearing completion and will be
published on this Website in Summer 2000. I'll bet you can't wait! :)
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Electronic Consciousness Will Lead to the Singularity Human-independent
computer evolution is one necessary precondition for the "runaway positive
feedback loop" of the Singularity to emerge. We are well on the way to such an
environment in computer hardware. Every new generation of computer chip
(integrated circuit) since 1978 has been designed by computer software, with an
ever-decreasing fraction of human effort involved in the design process. In
software, the new sciences of Emergent Computation (Artificial Life, Genetic
Algorithms, Neural Nets, Parallel Distributed Processing, Connectionist
Modeling) have demonstrated since the early 1980's that self-organizing
evolutionary computation can increase its own adaptive complexity entirely
independent of human aid-when given adequate hardware space.
Both Ray Kurzweil (The Age of Spiritual Machines) and Hans Moravec (Robot) have
recently written important books which indicate that by 2020 to 2030 we will
have human-level hardware complexity, and sufficient silicon evolutionary space
for Emergent Computation to develop higher-level mental functions, and
eventually consciousness. What happens after that must be dramatic, as you can
well imagine.
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Understanding the Singularity is Profitable In the period prior to the
Singularity, certain human endeavors will experience sustained and unrelenting
exponential productivity increases. Your capital investment in those areas will
consistently outperform all other market sectors. Maintaining a good
understanding of the motive forces causing this exponential growth, ways to
measure productivity growth using theories of information, computation, and
complexity, and identifying the technologies and companies at the center will
powerfully affect the performance of your investment assets. Combining this
knowledge with a sound and diversified long-term investment strategy will help
secure your family's financial future.
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A Choice of Three Singularity-Related Mailing Lists Please select one of the
following three mailing lists if you would like to receive information on events
relevant to improving your understanding of the approaching Singularity.
List 1: Major Singularity-Related Public Events (conferences, classes,
meetings).
(Avg. of 1 to 10 emailings per year, no more than 1 per month).
List 2: Major Singularity-Related News and Events.
(Avg. of 5-20 emailings per year, no more than 2 per month).
List 3: Major and Some Minor Singularity-Related News and Events.
(Avg. of 10-40 emailings per year, no more than 1 per week).
Please enter your email address, city, and state, to receive info on local
events.
You may unsubscribe by return email or switch to a different list at any time.
Your email address will be kept confidential (unless you wish it to be shared
with other community members) and never sold. The list's emphasis will be on
news from any location, and events in North America (until we have more
representatives). Regional and international Singularity Watch moderators warmly
welcomed.
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To receive info on local events:
Please type your city, state in the body of your email.
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Brief Homework for You, the Singularity Student At present there is only one
book, Ray Kurzweil's, The Age of Spiritual Machines, that I'd like you to
immediately purchase and read to educate yourself on the coming Singularity.
Overview and excerpts can be found here.
To buy this book at Amazon (approx. $12 paperback)
For cheaper new books try Buy.com or A1books.com, for used books try
bibliofind.com or Bookfinder.com
A convenient audiocassette version ($16) is also available.
If you are a slow reader, as most of us are, I strongly recommend purchasing
both the audio tape and paperback. Listen to the audio tape first, two times
through in your car (please forgive Ray's unfortunate choice of a "husky-voiced"
narrator), and then skim the book afterward, annotating as you go. This allows a
redundant learning strategy that will greatly increase your retention, and also
make navigating the 343-page book a pleasure. Consider sharing book and tape
with friends to amortize the extra expense.
Finally, please get on this List, and let me sort through the daily avalanche of
information to give you updates on key issues as they transpire. Please also
send me emails of any Singularity-related news or events you think I should
forward to our community.
I could give you more required homework, but then I wouldn't be doing my job,
which is to educate you on these concepts in the most high-yield, time-efficient
manner possible.
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Optional Further Reading Consider Vernor Vinge's brief (8 page) 1993 speech on
the Singularity which began the rapid spread of discussion of these concepts:
Here is a review of Damien Broderick's "The Spike" the only book so far which is
overtly about the Singularity. (Ray's book is implicitly about the Singularity,
and I expect he will explicitly use this term in coming years). Damien's book is
more of a survey than a thesis work, so if you are looking for a recent history
and overview of these ideas, you might get his book. If you want a thesis on
which of the various Singularity scenarios and mechanisms may be the most
important, you'll get one from me this Summer, I promise.
Foresight.org, Transhumanism.com, Extropy.org and Edge.org are perhaps the top
four nonspecialist communities that discuss the Singularity from their own
philosophical perspectives, and a visit to those sites can be quite informative.
General Reading
Finally, if you want to go beyond the Kurzweil book to get a broader and deeper
understanding of the recent cultural events leading us to the Singularity, here
are seven more works to consider skimming, arranged in priority order (and
online references, if you are time or budget limited).
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic
World, Kevin Kelly.
This great book is online.
Beyond Humanity: Cyberevolution and Future Minds, Gregory Paul and Earl Cox.
Sample chapter and reviews.
The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, John Brockman.
Available online.
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright
Reviews, excerpts and other articles.
The Global Brain: The Evolution of the Mass Mind, Howard Bloom
The hardcover will be out in August 2000. A draft version is now available
online as a series of chapters: I to XXI. First and last chapters are especially
informative.
Last Flesh: Life in the Transhuman Era, Christopher Dewdney
Brief review.
How We Became Posthuman : Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and
Informatics, N. Katherine Hayles
Summary | Prologue
Semi-Technical Reading
Science is still a few years away from a theory of computation (a superset of
physics, information theory, and complexity), that will outline and clarify what
we are now observing-an apparently inevitable progression to runaway complexity.
These four works all provide important examples of progress in this area. Skim
them if you are so inclined.
The Evolutionary Trajectory: The Growth of Information in the History and Future
of the Earth, Richard Coren
Review - brief registration necessary
Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity, John Holland
Summary | Review
Emergence: From Chaos to Order, John Holland
Three excellent reviews:
Review 1 | Review 2 | Review 3
For a popular overview of John and his perspectives on Artificial Life see Omni
Magazine Archives
At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and
Complexity, Stuart Kauffman
Preface | Review
Other reading lists will be forthcoming later this year.
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Singularity Watch Mailing Lists Get on this Mailing List, and let me sort
through the information to give you updates on the key issues as they transpire.
Please also send me emails of any Singularity-related news or events you think I
should forward to our community.
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Quotes from Some Important Singularity Watchers
"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman
intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended."
Vernor Vinge, 1993
>From The Coming Technological Singularity
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"Many physicists are attempting to derive a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) out of
the Universe... This effort may be incomplete in that particles may merely be a
reflection of the information-processing foundations of the Universe (but it is
certainly not a waste of time because this research may help us figure out how
the information-processing system works). In the end, we may not be able to
completely understand the Universe, if it is ever possible to do so, until it is
examined as a self-evolving and organizing information-processing machine, one
that produces intelligent minds to examine itself with. In this view, a theory
of consciousness may be consolidated with a theory of physics into a Grand
Information Theory (GIT)."
Gregory Paul & Earl Cox, 1994
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"Natural selection is important, but it has not labored alone...
self-organization is the root source of order. The order of the biological
world, I have come to believe, is not merely tinkered, but arises naturally and
spontaneously because of these principles of self-organization - laws of
complexity that we are just beginning to uncover and understand... How do we use
the information gleaned about the parts to build up a theory of the whole? The
deep difficulty here lies in the fact that the complex whole may exhibit
properties that are not readily explained by understanding the parts. The
complex whole, in a completely nonmystical sense, can often exhibit collective
properties, "emergent" features that are lawful in their own right."
Stuart Kauffman, 1995
"Technology is advancing 'exponentially' or faster. This means that the bulk of
the change in knowledge and capacity needed to precipitate the Singularity will
occur within the last year [or two] before the event. [Translation: most of us
won't see it coming.]"
Dan Clemmensen, 1996
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"We are brothers and sisters of our machines. Minds and tools have been
sharpened against each other ever since a scavenger's stone fractured cleanly
and the first cutting edge was held in a hunter's hand... All known systems that
exhibit intelligent behavior rely on the communication of information-two people
discussing a problem, exchanging less than 100 bits per second, or the
unfathomable number of bits per second exchanged among the 100 billion neurons
within an individual brain. Information does not imply intelligence, and
communication does not imply consciousness. The implications go the other way.
... all our [computer] networking protocols... are simply a way of allowing
hundreds of millions of individual processors to tune selectively to each other'
s signals, free of interference, as they wish."
George Dyson, 1997
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"The [biological] evolution we have experienced for 10 billion years is reaching
a state beyond which it cannot proceed without a fundamental and radical change
of direction, form, mechanism, and nature. [Due primarily to our ability to
generate meaningful information much more readily than our biological forms can
process it]."
Richard Coren, 1998
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"Computers doubled in speed every three years at the beginning of the twentieth
century, every two years in the 1950s and 1960s, and are now doubling in speed
every twelve months. This trend will continue, with computers achieving the
memory capacity and computing speed of the human brain by around the year 2020.
...the fate of the Universe is a decision yet to be made, one which we [or
perhaps more accurately, our electronic successors] will intelligently consider
when the time is right."
Ray Kurzweil, 1999
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What's Next for This Site After publishing my forthcoming book I will expand
this site to include web resources on understanding the Singularity, investing
wisely given the emergent constraints which appear to make the Singularity an
inevitable near-future event, ethical and social issues, and other important
topics with regard to managing the coming transition. If you'd like to help
develop this community, just email me and we'll find a place for you on the
board of directors. Meanwhile, please tell your future-concerned friends to join
this List.
That's it for now. I look forward to meeting you at future Singularity-Related
Conferences, my friends. Please take care of yourselves and your loved ones and
stay optimistic. The Universe appears to be unfolding as it should, and I think
it's pretty special that we are here to witness the biggest changes that any
humans will ever see. Get out your surfboards... It's a wonderful time to be
alive!
My Best,
John Smart
Los Angeles, CA
john@singularitywatch.com
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