The Brave New Singularity

The concept of a Singularity where man and technology merge into one can be hard to grasp, but it is inevitable. Some people see this as a frightening event, and others think it is all just gibberish. I believe that humanity will reach a point where man and machine both become one, due to the fact that technology is an “exponentially accelerating progress” (Grossman 2) as found by Raymond Kurzweil. A point will be reached where “every hour brings a century's worth of scientific breakthroughs,” (5) making it almost unavoidable for such a thing to happen. This can be seen as both a good and bad thing. Humans will theoretically be able to live forever, to cheat death, because of an infinite wealth of knowledge which would allow us to “scan our consciousnesses into computers and enter a virtual existence or swap our bodies for immortal robots and light out for the edges of space as intergalactic godlings” (5). One of the main issues of this is what will happen if a being of higher intellectual power were to join us; these new cyborgs may decide to wipe out the human race as we know it. This convergence would make us less authentically human, because we would no longer be ourselves. The new human race would be aided by robots making us physically indestructible, while super-powering our minds and making each and every human into a supercomputer of their own. This goes against the commonplace acceptance of an authentic person, which would be someone who ages, learns, and grows. In A Brave New World Bernard is onto something when he believes that there is a perfect state of existence in which man can achieve. Humanity is in severe danger of completely losing its sense of self as it progresses indefinitely toward becoming one with technology, which may cause the downfall of the human race.