Accelerando

I just finished reading a great story about the singularity and the implications it may have on humanity and our culture. The book is Accelerando by Charles Stross. You can read it here for free in a variety of formats.
The book describes the life of three generations of a family before, during, and after the singularity. The portrayal of the way technology progresses is very good throughout the story. Stross only uses ideas that have some scientific basis behind them. He does a really good job of using a lot of well researched theories as well. Having real ideas behind the story is nice because you could just Google something you don't understand and be provided with a great resources about that topic.

The ideas and technologies that Stross presents in the book really opened up my mind to the possibilities of a human/computer interface. Human potential will be much greater when technology like that is created and implemented widely. We will be able to get information so much faster than we can now. We won't be held back by how fast our brains can interpret text. The speed of the computers interfaced with out brain will be the new limit to how fast we can absorb information. The interfaces will probably start off with humans being able to control computers using certain thoughts. There will be electrodes that monitor brain activity and by learning certain thought processes you will be able to control a computer.

The next step would be making an interface between the neurons in the brain and the computer, so the electrical signals of the brain can interact directly with the computer. Our thoughts would be able to pull up information directly from the computer.
Stross describes a few ways that computers and brains could interact and allow humans to achieve intelligence beyond the capabilities of our biological bodies. A main part of the story revolves around the idea that humans will be able to upload a mapping of their brain to a computer in order to create a conscious being living inside a virtual world. People will ditch their bodies in order to become more intelligent.

A few other things he touches on are the nature of giant corporations affecting the development of mankind, extraterrestrial beings that revolve their existence around corporations, Dyson spheres, Matrioshka brains, future space craft, and the dismantling of the solar system for resources.


It's free, so why not read it

The Singularity

Lately, I have been spending a lot of time reading about the technological singularity.  For those who do not know what it is this is the gist of it. The singularity refers to the development of greater than human intelligence some time in the future. If a greater than human intelligence can be created then that intelligence would be able to create one smarter than itself. This would lead to incredibly fast creation of intelligence. Because of the grand implications of this idea, it is hard to predict what will actually happen to humanity after that point because there will be such a great leap in technology that all new developments would seem entirely alien to present day humans. When greater than human intelligence determines innovation, more and more intelligent technology will be created eventually causing intelligence to expand exponentially. Vernor Vinge wrote an excellent paper on the singularity and what it might mean for the human race.

Over time the propagation of new ideas throughout society has increased to faster and faster speeds. In early times ideas only spread by word of mouth. The speed that ideas could travel was limited by how fast someone could walk or ride an animal. There was also a limit on how long the original idea could be saved, due to a persons life span. Information had to be shared orally and be passed down from generation to generation in order for it to survive. The relatively slow process of learning that information also slowed down the rate that it traveled.

Eventually there was writing that could store information and allow information to be saved longer than a humans life. Also written text can be copied and distributed to new areas. The next major development for the spread of information

Here are some ways that some believe the singularity will be reached.

• Computers that are "conscious" may be created and they will reach superhuman intelligence
• Large computer networks may develop some greater intelligence
• Computer/human interfaces will allow man to think at much greater levels than those allowed by purely biological life forms.
• The altering of human biology to allow for greater intelligence. This could mean altering DNA in order to develop better brains.

In the next few posts I will expand on some of these ideas and share some of the history of the sharing and comprehension of information.