Comments on: The Singularity Is Weird

By: Can The Future Be Perfect? It Can Certainly Be Better | John Battelle's Search BlogJohn Battelle's Search Blog

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:19:28 +0000

[...] The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (review) [...]

By: I’m reading Will Our Industry Ever Innovate Like Morse? Probably Not. | william j. moner

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:59:13 +0000

[...] The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (my review) [...]

By: Will Our Industry Ever Innovate Like Morse? Probably Not. | John Battelle's Search Blog

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:33:37 +0000

[...] The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (my review) [...]

By: Jaron Lanier: Something Doesn’t Smell Right | John Battelle's Search Blog

Tue, 08 May 2012 21:25:43 +0000

[...] The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (my review) [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:54:00 +0000

A pattern of information, I think, is where this seems to be going…

By: Perrbo

Perrbo — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:13:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I read Singularity, but I think the thing that bothered me most about it is Kurzweil’s fix on death as being tragic and that the Singularity solves that ‘problem’ by giving human beings a shot at life ever after. Hm. Maybe. What this idea does hint at tho, and what technology is forcing us more and more to consider, is the definition of a self. The prevailing assumption is that the self is some kind of personality inside a body. When it dies, so do we. Not to say that isn’t totally true, but maybe instead of being just inside our bodies, our bodies are also inside of us.

Currently our bodies command most of the attention, but more and more our selves are becoming distributed over media – asynchronously, in real time, in a tweet, a post, on tablet, etc, you name it. Not that that wasn’t true pre internet. Even long before electronic media – a self was defined as much by family, culture, language etc then as it is now. It’s just that technology is forcing us to confront this notion of a distributed self much more profoundly than ever before, and we seem to be pretty eager to dive right in given the ease with which we’re willing to surrender our private lives to the public web.

So if a self isn’t body bound (only), what the heck is it? And where will it live 40, 140 or 1040 years from now? In Kurzweil’s utopia, in a machine. Personally, I think that’s just barely scratching the surface…

By: Mass Media Promoting Transhumanism: the “Mind-Blowing Benefits of Merging Human Brains and Computers” « Revolutionizing Awareness

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:38:33 +0000

[...] The Singularity Is Weird (battellemedia.com) [...]

By: Where Good Ideas Come From: A Tangled Bank | John Battelle's Search Blog

Where Good Ideas Come From: A Tangled Bank | John Battelle's Search Blog — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:03:13 +0000

[...] The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (my review) [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:02:00 +0000

Then we invented most of the major religions we are living with now…

By: Tom Foremski

Tom Foremski — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:20:00 +0000

Is “Singulairy” a religion? It seems more like a collection of graphs all pointing hockey-stick like into an inevitable future. A future where our biology collides with our technology, one that will create experiences indistinguishable from reality, but in controlled, programmed settings. Reality will still be reality but co-generated by our technologies. All within a generation or two. My view is that this future is inevitable and that if we are just a few years away from it, how do we know we aren’t already living in that “post” Singularity future, and have been for some time. 10,000 years ago were still living in caves, on the brink of discovering agriculture and creating civilizations, and science, etc. That’s a remarkably short time to make such amazing progress.