Singularity

[Eric Nielsen]

Vinge is referenced in the Wikipedia article titled: "Technological
Singularity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity



Eric

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 1:08 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Singularity
>
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>
> I don't think Vinge was around in 14th century, where the earliest
> citations seem to backtrack. Nor does he predate the math, physics and
> astrophysics use--the former around for centuries, the other two
> closer to one and to one-half century, but still longer than Vinge has
> been writing.
>
> I suppose, you mean this (from SingularityHub blog):
>
> "The singularity is the point in mankind’s future when we will
> transcend current intellectual and biological limitations and initiate
> an intelligence and information explosion beyond imagining."
>
> Then, there is the BioSingularity blog:
>
> "Already within the past sixty years, life in the industrialized world
> has changed almost beyond recognition except for living memories from
> the first half of the 20th century. This pattern will culminate in
> unimaginable technological progress in the 21st century. I believe
> there is a good chance we will achieve technological singularity as
> predicted by Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, although more
> conservatively than Kurzweil’s predictions, within the next 50-60
> years."
>
> Wiki summarizes all this as, "Technological singularity refers to the
> hypothesis that technological progress will become extremely fast, and
> so make the future unpredictable and qualitatively different from
> today."
>
> I suspect that the root of all this is Vinge's lack of understanding
> of "exponential" in Moore's law. Calling it "noise" is an
> overstatement.
>
> I'll just leave it at that.
>
> VS-)
>
> On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 8:40 AM, Robin Hamilton
> <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > 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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