The Huffington Post | Expecting the unexpected

May 8, 2015

The Huffington Post — May 8, 2015 | Charles Cannon

This is a summary. Read original article in full here.

Author Ray Kurzweil predicts, “A future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.

“Neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts we rely on, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death.”

I noted Kurzweil’s comment. This epoch is already upon us. Isn’t it true for many of us now, that familiar concepts we once relied on are obsolete? The status quo itself is increasingly challenged.

Singularity refers to a technological future where laws that have governed “reality” break down. In other words, the ultimate uncertainty.

John von Neumann — the genius mathematician who developed basic computer design — said the “ever accelerating progress of technology gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.” […]