Singularly Freaked

Susan Greenfield, an Oxford neuroscientist, is pretty freaked by the prospect of carbon-silicon convergence. Guess she's not much of a Battlestar Galactica fan, eh?

As Ray Kurzweil pointed out in this 2006 TEDTalk, Moore's Law has long made it  evident that silicon-based computing power would soon match that of the human brain. Add to that our increasingly sophisticated prosthetic design and implantation technology, and it's pretty clear that by mid-century, at the latest, hybrid human-machine life forms will be theoretically possible. Kurzweil called this moment, "the singularity."

At this year's TED, memologist Susan Blackmore  suggested that technology is already replicating itself via humans, a highly radical notion if you stop to think of it.

Point is, these ideas always frighten us. Visions of scenes of villagers with torches come to mind as Dr. Frankenstein's monster terrorizes the countryside.

I wonder when we're going to be able to have straightforward conversations about this inevitability. Probably not for a while, huh? Especially with Oxford neuroscientists raising the specter of lost individuality as the inevitable outcome of our continued use/dependency on technology.

Comments

[Ken G.]

"technology ... replicating itself via humans" is a great line, as it implies that it's the technology that's calling the shots and the humans have no conscious choice but to comply. We're no longer in charge; we've been demoted to mere technicians in their ascendancy.

[Tom Guarriello]

Yup, that's exactly what Blackmore's saying, Ken. New ideas like this can be freaky but I am becoming more convinced that our knowledge of the processes by which evolution(s) take place is extremely limited.