Singularity

[Robin Hamilton]

Has the term "singularity" condensed sufficiently to be incorporated in
dictionaries?  The WIKI article on it, when I looked, seemed to reflect my
own understanding,   [In Summary]:  "Coined by Vernor Vinge, and since
generated a fair degree of noise."

I'd be interested also if anyone has come across extended uses beyond the
original technological/AI event horizon sense as used by Vinge.  It seems to
me that in some ways the evolution of both google and Wikipedia itself could
be seen as mini-singularity events, where the Thing in question experiences
a (technically catastrophic) state-change.

Further questiion -- is the term "singularity" (and metaphorical uses
derived from it) particularly useful when applied to computer systems or
epiphenomena (the Web, Wikis, Twitter, etc.) built on a foundation of
computer systems,  and has this anything to do with the way in which
feedback loops (can) operate in a positively catastrophic way in computers,
and a negatively catastrophic way in the real world?

Banks grow too big to fail, but Wiki finally succeeds by virtue of its size
(so to speak)?

Does the term "singularity" add anything to previous terms such as
homeostasis, event horizon, discontinuity, tipping point, change of state,
etc.?

Robin

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