JoshCahoon@cs.com wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, I'm wondering how many on this list feel they came up
> with the idea of the singularity on their own. I feel like I did, and was
> surprised to find an organization based, in large part, on the concept.
>
I've been reading science fiction since about 1960, when I was ten
years old. There were singularity precursors of many types, but
most science fiction writers missed the computer revolution and
therefore the most likely path to the Singularity. I read
Vinge's "True Names" in 1980, and immediately started thinking
in those terms. I read Vinge's "Marooned in Realtime," with
its essay on the singularity, the year it was published.
I did not actually begin thinking about the timescales until
I got my home network connection, started surfing, and found
Anders' site, in 1995. At that point I realized that the
singularity is the maximum-liklihood future and that it may
arrive essentially at any time: highly likely before 2006,
almost certainly before 2015, and only a civilization-wide
catastrophe can stop it before 2020. This is no longer an
abstract, far-future philosophical event, but is well within
my personal planning horizon.
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