Singularity

            Y2K, May 21,2011, 2012; we have gotten so caught up on these apocalyptic premonitions that have no scientific background, and finally when one science-backed theory comes to light we glorify it.  Chanting in the Coliseum, we don’t see that we are the gladiators who are about to be slaughter.  Lev Grossman writes a story on Ray Kerzweil’s prediction of the Singularity (describe in physics as a point at which a function takes an infinite value) or the idea of technology taking such a drastic step that humanity will have to interface itself with the machine just to keep up.  This idea of joining the machine is a far worse prediction than any doomsday scenario that has faced us in the past for the sole reason that we will cause our own demise.

            We are welcoming the idea of trading away our humanity. Grossman himself offers what most would think, “we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you’d be as smart as they would be.”  So we are trading our humanity to be smarter and more capable. But then again, what is humanity?  The article discusses the idea of downloading who we are into the machine, but that is only available until those machines (who are supposed to be billions of times smarter than we are) decide that emotions are inefficient, and deletes those parts of us.  Besides, there would be no reason for these self aware robots to keep us around.   Everyone is glorifying this ideal.  Grossman’s only offer against it is a short sentence written in a sarcastic tone, “Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us.”  This is the only logical outcome because we are their creators.  Their intelligence will far outshine them, and because they are superior, they will defeat the threat, us.  We are ants to them and we are celebrating like they are gods.

            Brave New World is the perfect blueprint for what happens when technology ceases to exist for mankind and mankind begins to exist for technology.  Everyone in the story is created for what job they are going to have.  The system is hand designed so that everyone consumes so that more can be produced.  They exist so that the machine can be furthered.  There is no humanity; they no longer live for them.  What then, do they matter; the people in Brave New World are not people; they are not individuals. They are drones, built to live for a cold, calculated machine.  This is our future if we combine with the machine.