What is the “Singularity”
My first awareness of the term Singularity occured right at the beginning of the new millenium when I read Vernor Steffen Vinge’s essey: “The coming technological Singularity”! The reading of his article had about the same fundamental effect on me as several decades earlier my first reading of Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha” - both works about fundamental human trancendence!
The term essentially encompasses current and anticipated ground breaking developments in the coming two decades concerning artificial intelligence, robotics, and genetic engineering, theoretically resulting in “The Singularity”. It is meant to describe “the moment when technological change becomes so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history”; Lev Grossman, “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal,” Time, February 21, 2011. The idiom is derived from its meaning in astrophysics describing: “a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces that is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole”; www.unabridged.merriam-webster.com; retrieved March 25, 2014