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Singular Simplicity
Alfred Nordmann, IEEE Spectrum
The story of the Singularity is sweeping, dramatic, simple-and wrong
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Take the idea of exponential technological growth, work it through to its logical conclusion, and there you have the singularity. Its bold incredibility pushes aside incredulity, as it challenges us to confront all the things we thought could never come true-the creation of superintelligent, conscious organisms, nanorobots that can swim in our bloodstreams and fix what ails us, and direct communication from mind to mind. And the pièce de résistance: a posthuman existence of disembodied uploaded minds, living on indefinitely without fear, sickness, or want in a virtual paradise ingeniously designed to delight, thrill, and stimulate.
This vision argues that machines will become conscious and then perfect themselves, as described elsewhere in this issue. Yet for all its show of tough-minded audacity, the argument is shot through with sloppy reasoning, wishful thinking, and irresponsibility. Infatuated with statistics and seduced by the power of extrapolation, singularitarians abduct the moral imagination into a speculative no-man’s-land. To be sure, they are hardly the first to spread fanciful technological prophecies, but among enthusiasts and doomsayers alike their proposition enjoys an inexplicable popularity. Perhaps the real question is how they have gotten away with it.
The trouble begins with the singularitarians’ assumption that technological advances have accelerated. I’d argue that I have seen less technological progress than my parents did, let alone my grandparents.
… So on what do intelligent people base the idea that technological progress is moving faster than ever before? It’s simple: a chart of productivity from the dawn of humanity to the present day. It shows a line that inclines very gradually until around 1750, when it suddenly shoots almost straight up.
But that’s hardly surprising. Since around 1750 the world has witnessed the spread of an economic system, by the name of capitalism, that is predicated on economic growth. And how the economy has grown since then! But surely the creation of new markets and the increasingly fine division of labor cannot be equated with technological progress, as every consumer knows.
… Both examples of mindless extrapolation constitute wishful thinking. And in both cases, public debate is diverted from the real moral issues and quandaries that technology raises.
Rather than dream about how technology will soon effect an almost magical transformation of human life, societies need to debate the many real problems connected with technological changes that are already under way. These problems belong to the here and now.
For more articles, videos, and special features, go to The Singularity Special Report.
ALFRED NORDMANN, author of “Singular Simplicity”, is a professor of philosophy and the history of science at Darmstadt Technical University, in Germany. His interests include the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the physicist and philosopher of science Heinrich Hertz, and the birth of new scientific disciplines, such as nanotechnology.
(8 June 2008)
Contributor wagthedog1 writes:
This article is part of the IEEE Spectrum special on Singularity – a movement that believes exponential technological progress will deliver humanity from all its ills (http://spectrum.ieee.org/singularity). This series of articles explores the views of proponents and naysayers. Denial of Peak Oil concerns often entails citing rapid advances in technology, a strategy that parallels the views of Ray Kurzweil (See http://www.blacksunjournal.com/books/68_ray-kurzweil-on-future-energy_20…) who is one of the main drivers of the Singularity movement.
George Carlin’s Gift to Apocalypse
Carolyn Baker, Truth To Power
This morning as I began gathering Truth To Power’s Daily News Stories, I opened Energy Bulletin‘s site and found a stunning article by Kathy McMahon “26 Things You Can Do Right Now To Manage Your Anxiety“. Although she doesn’t directly talk about humor, numbers 20 and 21 in the article which refer to protecting one’s mental health and cultivating healthy pleasures certainly include it.
References on the internet to George Carlin since his death earlier this week are ubiquitous. All the photos and video clips have taken me back to the early seventies when I first discovered him as “the hippie-dippie mailman with your hippie-dippie mail–Man.” More recently he gave us priceless routines such as “The American Dream” and “7 Words You Can’t Say On Television”. Like all skillful court jesters, George made us take a second look at the insanity of our world and our government, put it in perspective, and see it for what it is-unequivocally absurd. Of course, that does not erase the lethality and horror of it, but it offers another way of looking at and living with it. Humor has always empowered the victims of oppression, even as they know that it cannot make it go away. Not a few holocaust concentration camp inmates were able to maintain some sense of humor, however faint, amid the horrors of their daily lives. Sanity and human dignity are always augmented when brutalized people are able to laugh at their torturers.
It is impossible to listen to Carlin routines without sensing the rage behind the humor. In fact, humor and anger are inextricably connected, and in some situations, the only means of expressing anger is through humor. One may not be able to obliterate one’s oppressor, but one can laugh at him, find him absurd or stupid and thereby exonerate one’s resistance to political and cultural tyranny. Moreover, in many instances, the comedian, more than the writer, activist, or visual artist, is able to facilitate cultural awakening through incisive humor.
(25 June 2008)
Class Struggle, Fossil Fuels, and Environmental Catastrophe
Hans G. Ehrbar, MR Zine (Monthly Review)
The excavation of fossil fuels was a one-time bonanza: it provided cheap energy that temporarily quadrupled the earth’s carrying capacity in terms of human population. Instead of an ever tightening immiseration of the working class and overthrow of the capitalist system, as expected by Marx, the one-time gift of fossil fuels led to a standoff between classes, in which rising profits were accompanied by a population explosion and rising living standards for important parts of the working class.
Although the limits of fossil-fuel based growth are apparent now, and it is clear that both numbers and per capita consumption of the human population will decline, the standoff in the class struggle blocks an adjustment to the planet’s true limits within the framework of the capitalist system. The working class is not strong enough to impose on the capitalists a steady-state economy with much lower rates of profit, and the capitalists are not strong enough to impose on the working class a much lower standard of living.
… In order to take advantage of the above structural advantages, the next goals must be:
(a) Work towards an international co-ordination of the many movements springing up. The masses have to understand that the present capitalist system does not have the institutions in place that would enable it to rationally respond to the impending climate catastrophe, water catastrophe, food catastrophe, and health catastrophe. The masses themselves must contribute one piece of the puzzle, namely, a global network which co-ordinates the grassroots actions everywhere and harmonizes the demands, in this way enabling the nation states to take necessary steps which they would otherwise be incapable of doing.
(18 June 2008)
Marxist point of view. However, many Marxists would oppose this argument, citing the left’s long tradition of hostility to Malthusianism. Marxism has been traditionally pro-technology, and sounds at time like the Cornucopians. In sum, no clear picture from the Marxist left. -BA
Techno-Fascism: Every Move You Make
Chellis Glendinning, CounterPunch
… elder political scientist Sheldon Wolin, who taught the philosophy of democracy for five decades, sees the current predicament of corporate-government hegemony as something more endemic.
“Inverted totalitarianism,” as he calls it in his recent Democracy Incorporated, “lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual.” To Wolin, such a form of political power makes the United States “the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed.”
… The challenge is to see the whole and all its parts, not just the shiny new device that purports to make one’s individual life easier or sexier — which in itself is a contributor to the making of political disengagement. The whole is a megamachine, with you and your liquid TV, Blackberry, and Prius a necessary cog.
Forging a survivable world is indeed going to take a change of administration — for starters. The terrifying reality that is mass technological society suggests more: radical techno-socio-economic re-organization, and to that end spring visions informed by the indigenous worlds we all hail from, the regionalism of Mumford’s day, and today’s bioregionalism. Or visions of the forced localization that Peak Oil, economic collapse, climate change, and ecological devastation propose.
Chellis Glendinning is the author of six books, including Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy; My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization; and the forthcoming Luddite.com: A Personal History of Technology.
(19 June 2008)
There seems to be something about consumerism and cheap fuel that makes this sort of social control possible – not just in the U.S. but throughout the world. As rising oil prices make it difficult to continue all-out consumerism, does this portend political change? -BA
