| Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge sat down last year with Adam Ford to talk about the Technological Singularity ——— ways to think about it, strategic forecasting, future studies and risk. |
Famous for his groundbreaking 1983 essay on the idea of the "Singularity," called "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era."
In the interview, Vinge author of A Fire Upon The Deep
says that the Singularity is the "most likely non-catastrophic event of the future." He expects this to take place before 2030. Vinge is an emeritus professor of mathematics at San Diego State University and considered one of the worlds greatest science fiction writers: a five-time winner of the Hugo Award, science fiction's most prestigious honor.
Vinge's stories explore themes including deep space, the future, and the Singularity, a term he famously coined for the future emergence of a greater-than-human intelligence brought about by the advance of technology.
Vinge suggests that inevitable technological singularities in intelligent civilizations represented the most logical explanation for the "vast silence" in space, commonly known as the Fermi Paradox.
"We are caterpillars, soon to be butterflies, and when we look to the stars, we take the vast silence of other races transformed."
"We will soon create intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding."
SOURCE Adam Ford
| By 33rd Square | Subscribe to 33rd Square |
0 comments:
Post a Comment