The Technological Singularity

I just posted on the Amanda Todd cyberbullying case and Youtube video and how it is a chilling example of how social media and the digital age are radically changing adolescence, social ostracization, celebrity, anonymity, accountability, and policy in the 21st century.

We have studied how science and technology and society are related and affect each other. I believe society to be in a state of transition that thoroughly needs to be studied and looked at during the transition. I said previously that digital technology is both new and yet thoroughly affects every aspects of our lives, and that thus we do not know the long term consequences of our new technology. I wonder how society will look like once it has reached steady-state in regards to digital technology, or if it will indeed ever reach a stead-state.

There's a concept in post-humanism and science fiction called the Technological Singularity. It is the idea that expands on Moore's Law of computers to say that technology in general changes exponentially, and thus there must be a point where that change becomes infinite, a point of asymptotic change. It claims that beyond the Singularity, the future is fundamentally and inherently unknowable. To quote Arthure C. Clarke,

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Since we're talking about science fiction, I'd like to recommend the works of Vernor Vinge, who's stories popularized the concept of the technological singularity. In particular, his Marooned in Realtime is a great mystery novel about a group of people who were left in stasis for too long, and essentially awoke on the other side of the singularity to a future devoid of humanity and clues to their disappearance. In particular, the people who were put in stasis only a few years apart in the years right before the singularity vary vastly in technological power. The story is about a person who gets marooned in realtime while the rest of the remnants of human society jump to the far future, and a detective commissioned to figure out who dunnit. I think one of my favorite parts is that a lot of the suspects have different conspiracy theories and ideas about the singularity but no one really knows. Represented are a scientific recluse, a corporate employee, a space traveler, a religious prophet, and a host of other characters. While the idea of 22nd century commercial family camping equipment having greater fire power than 20th century superpowers may seem absurd, it may not seem so absurd when we consider that we are not too far away from amateur biotechnology and home 3D printers.

While I don't personally ascribe to a hard Technological Singularity (I believe that technological progress is limited by social conservatism, resources, human ability, and the physical limits imposed by nature), it is an interesting metaphor for the change of the 21st century. One of the things impressed to me by my interviewee is that the technologies available to geneticists and genomics changes so rapidly that he couldn't say where it will be 5 years hence, and this is true of all technology. As much as I have cynicism for humanity and society, I have to say, I am very excited to see where technology goes in the next 50+ years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity