As an ardent Sci-fi guy, i’d read about the concept of Technological Singularity (called other things in other places) a few times in the past. Did a quick recap today. Here goes, for posterity!

Technological Singularity is the event which will occur when we build intelligent machines capable of building machines more intelligent than themselves. It helps to think of it this way, in broad conceptual terms. If a machine could invent a machine more intelligent than itself, such a machine could invent one even more intelligent and so forth, growing in an exponential manner. This will lead, eventually, into the creation of a Super Intelligence.

There are many things which suggest that we are fast approaching the singularity (should I call it ‘The Singularity’?). We are already beating Moore’s law, which stated that we would double the number of transistors on a chip every 18 months. Media is cheaper than ever, and becoming cheaper at astonishing speeds. 2TB Hard Disks?? Come On!!

From buying PCs with 400 MB disks, to buying 4 GB SD cards, which fit in my cell phone, took 10 years. Estimates show, that in the next ten years, we will have postage stamp size storage, which will be able to store every movie ever made! Chew on that for while.

And the computers are getting better and better at mimicking the brain. Futurists say that by 2029, artificial intelligences will be able to pass the Turing Test. Essentially, this means that for all practical purposes, such an intelligence would be indistinguishable from a human intelligence! How far till the Singularity from there?

It may seem too fantastic to be real, but so did handheld computers, mapping the genome, thought controlled machines and so many other things which are very much a reality today.

Which begs the question: How will we adapt? What about the organizations which define our society? Businesses, universities, religion?

See you in the future :)