Jeff Gostin says:
What _is_ Singularity? It's not a term I'm familiar with.
Perry Metzger replies:
The notion that the rate of progress is increasing, and the increase in the rate is also increasing, so at some point in the next century more change will occur per hour than occurred in all of human history to, say, now. "The Singularity" is the point at which the world becomes not merely odd but incomprehensable TO US. Presumably those alive at the time will not really notice.
This is not the only possible definition -- I wrote a paper in '84 defining it as a singular event or change beyond which "all bets are off". No future events after that point can really be reasonably predicted on this side of it. For example, the sudden development of a "god-like" AI. Or the discovery of some medical treatment which increases human intelligence two-fold... which is cheap and is widely distributed to everyone. Not all of the possible singularities are good... I would call global thermonuclear war a singularity, or the rise of a virus like AIDS, that spreads like the common cold. Sorry, this is getting pretty far away from subjects relevant to cypherpunks. The Extropian's list has been having a discussion recently about the "singularity" of runaway AI development acceleration. That list is probably the appropriate place to look for more info... Doug ___________________________________________________________________ Doug Cutrell General Partner doug@OpenMind.com Open Mind ===================================================================