Ch. 16: Last Off-Ramp Before the Apocalypse

Almost as soon as the world began, people have been predicting its end. I think so, anyway, and back when I was a regular church-goer I was inaudated with doom-and-gloom sermons about how we're possibly living in the end of days. Soon, we were promised, soon it would all end, and God would call his children up to Heaven. And yet it hasn't happened yet. No wonder I used to be such a pessimist ;-)

The essay in question addresses more apocalyptic rhetoric, this time in the form of theories that predict our coming enslavement by computers. Thanks to the theory of singularity (as proposed by Ray Kurzweil among others), everything that is invented or occurs eventually results in some catastrophic outcome. The first caveman to strike down his friend with a bone prefigured nuclear weapons, singularity seems to say. And what's worse, we can't really do anything about that. A single transistional moment will occur which upsets the fragile balance of our current society and turns us into an anarchic collective, pitted against one another in ways unseen since the beginning of organized civilization.

Like all theories about the future, though, this one benefits from the fact that there's no way to verify it; we can't look into the future and predict it, only look at the past and pick up on trends that *might* lead us to a particular point. Singularity junkies thus are about as accurate as fortune tellers and psychics. Kurzweil in particular says that with computers bound to take over, we'll even lose the one commonality among all humans: language. That's a shame, because theorists like Kurzweil wouldn't be able to write their ideas down and sell them in book form.

Are we doomed to a Matrix-like existence, forever suspended in a giant computer's brain? God, I hope not, especially if it takes someone of Keanu Reeves' intellectual stature to save us from that. The problem with singularity is that it predicts the unknowable, based on events that may or may not be connected. You can't really say for sure that cavemen using bones as weapons led directly to nuclear arms, but it sure makes for a nice way to sell books. And if you make that intellectual leap, then of course computers taking over is plausible. It reminds me of the fervent doomsday believers, the ones who clutch at the slimmest threads to back up their view that we're all up shit creek without a paddle. Or (if that comparison rubs you the wrong way) they're like conspiracy theorists who want to believe that JFK was a victim of an elaborate conspiracy. They pick up on some credible evidence that all is not as it seems, and run with it until it's in the realm of speculation and wish-fufillment.