Posts: 659
From: South Korea
Registered: May 2009

posted September 15, 2010 11:45 PM            

---

Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hKG5l_TDU8&feature=related

------------------
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter.

IP: Logged

Posts: 4411
From: The Goober Galaxy
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 06, 2011 11:22 AM            

---

------------------
"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia." Charles Schultz

IP: Logged

Posts: 251
From: Does it matter?
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 06, 2011 04:23 PM            

---

Dumb question: What, in layman's terms is Singularity? I can't find an explanation that wasn't written by a genius. Is it the union of a person and technology to make one who never ages or dies? I'm a little apprehensive about this. Not the physical immortalitty part. I just don't want technology to replace kindness and all the other human qualities that are good and decent. I'm glad you posted this!

IP: Logged

Posts: 82
From: South Korea
Registered: Nov 2010

posted January 06, 2011 05:35 PM            

---

As you know, no question is ever dumb, and in fact, I confess that I also have almost no idea what is meant by singularity ... I might research it but then again I might not. I THINK what it means is this: everything in the universe is completely unique. Actually the term is probably from mathematics or something ... Mmmm ... maybe I should research this a bit. Fact is I posted this because I was looking for the original song: "I am the very model of a Modern Major General" which is from the musical the Pirates of Penzance, one of my absolutely favorite things of all time. I saw the movie, not the musical, but it's really cool. Aaaaanyways, let me see if I can find out what is meant by singularity. Google, here we come!

------------------
be who you are and say what you feel cos those who matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter!

IP: Logged

Posts: 82
From: South Korea
Registered: Nov 2010

posted January 06, 2011 05:44 PM            

---

Uhm ... it's seems complicated but I for one am not worried cos I'm a Saggitarian optimist and I believe the future will be better than the past. Anyway I don't think there's that much difference between animal and mineral anyway ... by which I mean I already see everything as being alive, aware and intelligent. I totally wouldn't be freaked out by sci-fi robots or self-aware machines. It's so sci-fi! I think kindness is part of the fabric of the universe, just as cruelty is, and as we as human beings are becoming more empathetic in our own evolution there is no reason to suppose that "machines" would evolve to greater utalitarianism such as in the Matrix. I mean the Matrix is a really cool movie, but it plays on our human fears of things we don't understand. I'm more thinking of movies like AI, (Artificial Intelligence) which is one of the most heart-wrenching and disturbing movies I have ever seen.
Anyway here's a link to the wiki-pedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

------------------
be who you are and say what you feel cos those who matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter!

IP: Logged

Posts: 4503
From: Still out looking for Schr�dinger's cat.........& LEXIGRAMMING... is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 06, 2011 10:14 PM            

---

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS TOPIC!
Thank you fatinkerbel for posting!

In popular culture
See also: List of fictional computers

quote:

---

James P. Hogan's 1979 novel The Two Faces of Tomorrow is an explicit description of what is now called the Singularity.
An artificial intelligence system solves an excavation problem on the moon in a brilliant and novel way,
but nearly kills a work crew in the process. Realizing that systems are becoming too sophisticated and complex to predict
or manage, a scientific team sets out to teach a sophisticated computer network how to think more humanly.
The story documents the rise of self-awareness in the computer system, the humans' loss of control and failed attempts
to shut down the experiment as the computer desperately defends itself, and the computer intelligence reaching maturity.

While discussing the singularity's growing recognition, Vernor Vinge (1993) writes that
"it was the science-fiction writers who felt the first concrete impact." In addition to his own short story
"Bookworm, Run!", whose protagonist is a chimpanzee with intelligence augmented by a government experiment,
he cites Greg Bear's novel Blood Music (1983) as an example of the singularity in fiction.
Vinge described surviving the singularity in his 1986 novel Marooned in Realtime.
Vinge later expanded the notion of the singularity to a galactic scale in A Fire Upon the Deep (1992),
a novel populated by transcendent beings, each the product of a different race and possessed of distinct agendas
and overwhelming power.

In William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer, artificial intelligences capable of improving their own programs
are strictly regulated by special "Turing police" to ensure they never exceed a certain level of intelligence,
and the plot centers on the efforts of one such AI to circumvent their control.
The 1994 novel The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect features an AI that augments itself so quickly as to gain
low-level control of all matter in the universe in a matter of hours.

A more malevolent AI achieves similar levels of omnipotence in Harlan Ellison's short story
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967).

William Thomas Quick's novels Dreams of Flesh and Sand (1988), Dreams of Gods and Men (1989),
and Singularities (1990) present an account of the transition through the singularity; in the latter novel,
one of the characters states that mankind's survival requires it to integrate with the emerging machine intelligences,
or it will be crushed under the dominance of the machines –
the greatest risk to the survival of a species reaching this point
(and alluding to large numbers of other species that either survived or failed this test,
although no actual contact with alien species occurs in the novels).

The singularity is sometimes addressed in fictional works to explain the event's absence. Neal Asher's Gridlinked series
features a future where humans living in the Polity are governed by AIs and while some are resentful,
most believe that they are far better governors than any human. In the fourth novel, Polity Agent,
it is mentioned that the singularity is far overdue yet most AIs have decided not to partake in it
for reasons that only they know. A flashback character in Ken MacLeod's 1998 novel The Cassini Division
dismissively refers to the singularity as "the Rapture for nerds", though the singularity goes on to happen anyway.

Popular movies in which computers become intelligent and violently overpower the human race include Colossus:
The Forbin Project, the Terminator series, the very loose film adaptation of I, Robot, and The Matrix series.
The television series Battlestar Galactica also explores these themes.

Isaac Asimov expressed ideas similar to a post-Kurzweilian singularity in his short story The Last Question.
Asimov's future envisions a reality where a combination of strong artificial intelligence
and post-humans consume the cosmos, during a time Kurzweil describes as when "the universe wakes up",
the last of his six stages of cosmic evolution as described in The Singularity is Near.
Post-human entities throughout various time periods of the story inquire of the artificial intelligence
within the story as to how entropy death will be avoided. The AI responds that
it lacks sufficient information to come to a conclusion, until the end of the story when the AI does indeed arrive
at a solution. Notably, it does so in order to fulfill its duty to answer the humans' question.

St. Edward's University chemist Eamonn Healy discusses accelerating change in the film Waking Life.
He divides history into increasingly shorter periods, estimating "two billion years for life,
six million years for the hominid, a hundred-thousand years for mankind as we know it".
He proceeds to human cultural evolution, giving time scales of ten thousand years for agriculture,
four hundred years for the scientific revolution, and one hundred fifty years for the industrial revolution.
Information is emphasized as providing the basis for the new evolutionary paradigm,
with artificial intelligence its culmination. He concludes we will eventually create "neohumans"
which will usurp humanity’s present role in scientific and technological progress and
allow the exponential trend of accelerating change to continue past the limits of human ability.

Accelerating progress features in some science fiction works, and is a central theme in Charles Stross's Accelerando.
Other notable authors that address singularity-related issues include Karl Schroeder, Greg Egan, Ken MacLeod,
Rudy Rucker, David Brin, Iain M. Banks, Neal Stephenson, Tony Ballantyne, Bruce Sterling, Dan Simmons, Damien Broderick,
Fredric Brown, Jacek Dukaj, Stanislav Lem, Nagaru Tanigawa, Douglas Adams and Ian McDonald.

The feature-length documentary film Transcendent Man is based on Ray Kurzweil and his book The Singularity Is Near.
The film documents Kurzweil's quest to reveal what he believes to be mankind's destiny.

In 2009, scientists at Aberystwyth University in Wales and the U.K's University of Cambridge designed a robot
called Adam that they believe to be the first machine to independently discover new scientific findings.
Also in 2009, researchers at Cornell developed a computer program that extrapolated the laws of motion from
a pendulum's swings.

The web comic Dresden Codak deals with trans-humanistic themes and the singularity.

The plot of an episode of the TV program The Big Bang Theory (season 4, episode 2,
"The Cruciferous Vegetable Amplification") revolves around the anticipated date of the coming Singularity.

Industrial/Steampunk entertainer Doctor Steel weaves the concept of a technological singularity into his music and videos,
even having a song entitled The Singularity.
He has been interviewed on his views by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies,
and has also authored a paper on the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity[/QUOTE]

Then there is the
Gravitational singularity

quote:

---

Gravitational singularity
A gravitational singularity or spacetime singularity is a location where the quantities
that are used to measure the gravitational field become infinite in a way that does not depend
on the coordinate system. These quantities are the scalar invariant curvatures of spacetime,
some of which are a measure of the density of matter.

For the purposes of proving the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems, a spacetime with a singularity
is defined to be one that contains geodesics that cannot be extended in a smooth manner.
The end of such a geodesic is considered to be the singularity. This is a different definition,
useful for proving theorems.

The two most important types of spacetime singularities are curvature singularities and conical singularities.
Singularities can also be divided according to whether they are covered by an event horizon or not (naked singularities).
According to general relativity, the initial state of the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, was a singularity.
Another type of singularity predicted by general relativity is inside a black hole:
any star collapsing beyond a certain point would form a black hole, inside which a singularity (covered by an event horizon) would be formed,
as all the matter would flow into a certain point (or a circular line, if the black hole is rotating).
These singularities are also known as curvature singularities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity[/QUOTE]

------------------
I remember, therefore I am immortal~LEXX
Learning is eternal; all true Gods know this simple truth~LEXX
~Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!
~Leonardo da Vinci
Religions are the cradles of despotism ~Marquis de Sade
Truth is The Incorruptible Light~Lucy
The present time is theirs, but the future is mine.~Nikola Tesla"
}><}}(*>♥<*){{><{
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

IP: Logged

Posts: 82
From: South Korea
Registered: Nov 2010

posted January 06, 2011 10:31 PM            

---

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LEXX thank you. I must say I have many times wished I were more intelligent so that I could understand everything, and I'd certainly be first in line to see the meeting of minds between 'humans' and 'machines'. Anyway because I'm actually a philosophy fan I'm rather inclined to interpret what already is in order to show that what we're speaking of here is already here! I am typing this sentence on my computer, and if my computer weren't here now, I wouldn't be able to say this sentence, and that would be like not existing, if you imagine that to exist is to be perceived. So it is thanks to my computer that "I" exist right now ... that "I" already being something to which two things , fatinkerbel + computer , are necessary. So I'm already biologically enhanced, from the point of view of the computer, AND digitally enhanced, from the point of view of the flesh and blood creature whose fingers are typing this. Ooooh I'm getting dizzy! Back to Korean pop-video's for me ... byeee : )

------------------
be who you are and say what you feel cos those who matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter!

IP: Logged

Posts: 4503
From: Still out looking for Schr�dinger's cat.........& LEXIGRAMMING... is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 06, 2011 10:46 PM            

---

Singularity Hub Reviews Intel CTO Justin Rattner’s IDF Keynote on the Future of Technology

------------------
I remember, therefore I am immortal~LEXX
Learning is eternal; all true Gods know this simple truth~LEXX
~Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!
~Leonardo da Vinci
Religions are the cradles of despotism ~Marquis de Sade
Truth is The Incorruptible Light~Lucy
The present time is theirs, but the future is mine.~Nikola Tesla"
}><}}(*>♥<*){{><{
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

IP: Logged

Posts: 4503
From: Still out looking for Schr�dinger's cat.........& LEXIGRAMMING... is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 06, 2011 10:52 PM            

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by fatinkerbel:
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LEXX thank you. I must say I have many times wished I were more intelligent so that I could understand everything, and I'd certainly be first in line to see the meeting of minds between 'humans' and 'machines'. Anyway because I'm actually a philosophy fan I'm rather inclined to interpret what already is in order to show that what we're speaking of here is already here! I am typing this sentence on my computer, and if my computer weren't here now, I wouldn't be able to say this sentence, and that would be like not existing, if you imagine that to exist is to be perceived. So it is thanks to my computer that "I" exist right now ... that "I" already being something to which two things , fatinkerbel + computer , are necessary. So I'm already biologically enhanced, from the point of view of the computer, AND digitally enhanced, from the point of view of the flesh and blood creature whose fingers are typing this. Ooooh I'm getting dizzy! Back to Korean pop-video's for me ... byeee : )

---

Thank you again!

------------------
I remember, therefore I am immortal~LEXX
Learning is eternal; all true Gods know this simple truth~LEXX
~Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!
~Leonardo da Vinci
Religions are the cradles of despotism ~Marquis de Sade
Truth is The Incorruptible Light~Lucy
The present time is theirs, but the future is mine.~Nikola Tesla"
}><}}(*>♥<*){{><{
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

IP: Logged

Posts: 4503
From: Still out looking for Schr�dinger's cat.........& LEXIGRAMMING... is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 06, 2011 10:55 PM            

---

IP: Logged

Posts: 4411
From: The Goober Galaxy
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 07, 2011 12:26 AM            

---

Self-aware artificial intelligence is a scary thought. Can someone say Terminator?

IP: Logged

Posts: 82
From: South Korea
Registered: Nov 2010

posted January 07, 2011 02:26 AM            

---

I have only two things to say:

1) You say Terminator, I say, I'll be back.

2) Bungee-jumping is scary. Bungee-jumping is fun. Therefore scary is fun.

------------------
be who you are and say what you feel cos those who matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter!

IP: Logged

Posts: 4503
From: Still out looking for Schr�dinger's cat.........& LEXIGRAMMING... is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 07, 2011 03:35 AM            

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Randall:
Self-aware artificial intelligence is a scary thought. Can someone say Terminator?

---

Then there is the absolutely heart wrenching love story of Bicentennial Man.

Bicentennial Man - Then You Look At Me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAnTp7cHEHE

I cry so much each time I see this beautiful love story.
I want such a perfect true love.

------------------
I remember, therefore I am immortal~LEXX
Learning is eternal; all true Gods know this simple truth~LEXX
~Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!
~Leonardo da Vinci
Religions are the cradles of despotism ~Marquis de Sade
Truth is The Incorruptible Light~Lucy
The present time is theirs, but the future is mine.~Nikola Tesla"
}><}}(*>♥<*){{><{
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

IP: Logged

Posts: 4411
From: The Goober Galaxy
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 07, 2011 07:10 AM            

---

Yeah, that was a really sad movie. Machines are used for our convenience. Once they become self-aware and realize how superior they are to us in ability to learn/process information, they will in the very least rebel against their "enslavement," or in the very worst, treat us like we treat a mosquito and attempt to exterminate us. Technology is pushing toward singularity and the creation of self-aware robots that look like us to handle household chores, and when that day comes, beware! Sounds like a great movie!

------------------
"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia." Charles Schultz

IP: Logged

Posts: 168
From:
Registered: Aug 2010

posted January 07, 2011 09:59 AM            

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Randall:
Yeah, that was a really sad movie. Machines are used for our convenience. Once they become self-aware and realize how superior they are to us in ability to learn/process information, they will in the very least rebel against their "enslavement," or in the very worst, treat us like we treat a mosquito and attempt to exterminate us. Technology is pushing toward singularity and the creation of self-aware robots that look like us to handle household chores, and when that day comes, beware! Sounds like a great movie!

---

it was... " I Robot"

------------------
If you pull it too tightly, the string will break.

IP: Logged

Posts: 251
From: Does it matter?
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 07, 2011 08:51 PM            

---

I'm with Randall on this. Think Blade Runner.

IP: Logged

Posts: 4411
From: The Goober Galaxy
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 08, 2011 11:07 AM            

---

I've actually never seen Blade Runner. What's it about?

------------------
"No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown." William Penn

IP: Logged

Posts: 251
From: Does it matter?
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 08, 2011 11:27 AM            

---

Do you have Netflix? I think you can Watch Instantly. It's one of the best movies, sci-fi or not, ever.

IP: Logged

Posts: 4503
From: Still out looking for Schr�dinger's cat.........& LEXIGRAMMING... is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 08, 2011 11:08 PM            

---

Blade Runner

Runaway

I,Robot

IP: Logged

Posts: 4411
From: The Goober Galaxy
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 09, 2011 10:22 AM            

---

------------------
"Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all." Harriet Van Horne

IP: Logged

Posts: 82
From: South Korea
Registered: Nov 2010

posted January 09, 2011 05:23 PM            

---

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjAoBKagWQA

------------------
be who you are and say what you feel cos those who matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter!

IP: Logged

Posts: 97
From:
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 10, 2011 12:41 PM            

---

This is the link: This video contains content from Channel 4, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
Sorry about that.

IP: Logged

Posts: 4411
From: The Goober Galaxy
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 10, 2011 01:10 PM            

---

Better put a kill switch on those robots.

------------------
"Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all." Harriet Van Horne

IP: Logged

Posts: 82
From: South Korea
Registered: Nov 2010

posted January 10, 2011 06:39 PM            

---

lol

------------------
be who you are and say what you feel cos those who matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter!

IP: Logged