Apocalypse How???

In an earlier post, I related the acronymic amusements of our prepper friends, known to the uninitiated as survivalists. But as much as I might personally relish and benefit financially from the Zombie Apocalypse in the form of a pulse-pounding exploitive screenplay – that’s just not how it’s going down.

The Singularity. That will be TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It for those who still refuse to click the link above and believe me you’re really missing out if you don’t, cause it’s funny as fuc…but I digress). Even if the Singularity doesn’t spell doom for the human race, it will still be TEOTWAWKI. Why? Let’s go to the tape:

Okay, now if you want to hear someone who actually knows what they’re talking about, let’s go to the tape:

That was Ray Kurzweil, one of the high rollers of the Singularity movement. There is a very entertaining documentary about him called Transcendent Man. Outside of Mr. Kurzweil being a huge genius and eccentric, the many scientists interviewed for the documentary represent a wide spectrum of viewpoints on the Big Event. There are skeptics of varying degrees, some who believe the human brain can never be superseded by artificial intelligence, some who argue with the optimistic timeline (predictions by adherents are typically in the 2025-2045 range), many convinced that the Singularity is inevitable, but Kurzweil’s rosy scenario of humans remaining in control of the technology post-event is laughably naive. One physicist makes a very convincing argument for the Terminator scenario by pointing out that most humans don’t go out of their way to avoid stepping on bugs and that the emergent Super-Intelligence will be even more proportionately advanced than we are over the cockroach population.

This?

Another possibility, one that Paul and I have predicted is that human intelligence and artificial intelligence wil merge to create a new hybrid life form, integrating robotics, nanotechnology and biological computing.

Or this?

Will resistance be futile? Who knows. But I don’t suspect we’ll have to wait all that long to get a sense of where the cyber wind is blowing. The best barometer? Video games. I’ve been a gamer since Wolfenstein 3D and Doom (released in 1992-93). Fast forward 20 years to Portal 2. Notice any improvement?

Pass the chain gun, I’ve got some extremely pixelated Nazis to kill!

Pass the BFG I’ve got some demons that need dyin!

Pass the Portal gun and get me the hell away from Glados!

Twenty years pass and we’ve gone from herby-jerky-use-your-imagination-because-the-rendering-is-barely-recognizable computer graphics to smooth-as-silk-motion and photo-realistic images. Add Kinnect, Nintendo no-glasses 3D and it’s not that difficult to imagine the state-of-the-art twenty years hence when we enter the predicted open window of the Singularity or as my prepper friends more amusingly call WTSHTF.

Dave? What are you doing Dave?

Something to think about. Or avoid thinking about if you still want to relax and convince yourself that the history of the human race and our evolution will continue to progress in a molasses slow linear timeline.

Me? I’m prepping.

Hmmm. Is he even worth assimilating? The smooth head I can deal with, but that red mock turtleneck has got to go.

Now that’s what I call a man! Pucker up Data, we’ve got some two legged bugs to squash!