The Singularity is Near

Ths week we had to write an abstract of our last book we read, mine was The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. Though the topic is excessively complex, this is what I managed to come up with:

The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil is a book about the implications of the rapid exponential growth of technology, and the point when technological evolution merges with biological evolution. Kurzweil’s book delineates the past, present, and future course of the exponential growth of technology creating an excellently well articulated, thoroughly supported and cited explanation of his ideas of the evolution of technology. The Singularity is an era that incorporates artificial intelligence gaining the ability to access its source code and become infinitely more intelligent, our merger with that technology to allow us to become infinitely more intelligent (and become resistant to disease and other inherent vulnerabilities in our biological structure), living forever as the life expectancy per year increases more than a year per year, a revolution in genetics where we can alter to genetic structure as biological beings without limit, living partially in virtual reality that we create for ourselves, augmenting reality as we perceive it, expanding our intelligence throughout the universe, waking up the universe with intelligent nano-technology to bring in into a sentient consciousness saturated with intelligence.

Ray Kurzweil Transcendent Man Premiere!

This week I was fortunate enough to get to travel up to LA to see the premiere of the movie 'Transcendent Man' which was a documentary about the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil. The premiere consisted of Kurzweil introducing his ideas and the film, and then of course, next was the screening. The movie offered a really cool insight into actually seeing the human side of Kurzweil (hah), and see a thorough documentary about his ideas, the implications (be them positive, or negative), the opinions of many top scientists who both agree and disagree with Kurzweil, and the innovations actually being made in the field of technology. And, as if the movie itself wasn't great enough on it's own, I actually got meet and speak with Kurzweil after the premiere! It was such an incredible experience, I can't believe I got the opportunity.

On a related note, as I become more and more of a Singulartarian (someone who embraces the implications of The Singularity), I've been informing more and more people of it. Actually as I'm writing this I'm having a lively debate with five friends of mine, answering questions, and watching speeches by Kurzweil, to help inform them about The Singularity. It's always a blast informing (and trying to convince) someone new about the profound implications about the rapid exponential growth of technology, and the profound implications of The Singularity as it first, offends them, then terrifies them, as they try to resist it's concepts, and eventually start to embrace the it's logic, then begin to fearfully explore it's implications and become excited.

Romance

This week we have been partially focusing on investigating romance. Over the course of this, we have asked ourselves several questions. One of the questions we asked was if a true love = a soul mate (the one and only). I argued that true love was based off a connection that is made that feels deep and unique based off of unnatural levels of understanding and common ground. It is statistically unlikely that one would find several people with these qualities, but it is also unlikely that one would only person with qualities near these. So the true love is determined between a small number of these people, one of which typically more so than the others, which would be defined as "the soul mate" making the others look still as "true loves" but not the one soul mate. So in essence I agreed with the statement. Another question that was asked was if love conquers all, which frankly if you look at completely objectively and rationally is obviously impossible in certain situations, for example, if your partner dies, it's not really an overcomable obstacle now is it? Silly questions aside, it's a fun and interesting topic that usually inspires some lively debate.

This past week we have progressed further in our inquiry project. We continued to read Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, which proves to be be ceaselessly interesting as it presents daunting concept after another. We have also begun contacting people to interview. The people we would truly like to speak with are the authors of the books we're reading, but seeing as how this is generally unlikely, we are also attempting to contact people at local institutions who are in the same fields as the our topics of study. As far as I know, we have not successfully coordinated an interview yet, but my hopes are still high of hopefully speaking to a professor or perhaps even an author.

On a more interesting note, Adam, Sam, and I have all been attempting to improve our recollection of our dreams, and attain lucid dreaming states. While each of us seems to be getting close (note when I say close, I do mean we were nearly there, but I am not saying we could easily replicate this, or will certainly attain lucid dreaming anytime soon) in various ways, none of us have been fully successful. I do look forward to continuing our research, reading, and exploration into the dreamworld.

Inquiry Project

This week we have been working on the preliminary stages of our inquiry project. We are currently in the process of finding people to interview, and attempting to get tickets to see Ray Kurzweil speak at a premiere of his new movie 'Transcendent Man'. It's stacking up to look like it's going to be a very interesting project, studying the Singularity, reverse brain engineering, and states of lucid dreaming. As it turns out, we are reading the same book on lucid dreaming that Will Haase did when he was attempting it in college, so I feel as though we've made a good choice in that category, considering the literally dozens of books to decide between on the topic. I'm really hoping we'll be able to actually speak with Kurzweil after his movie and speech, that would just be phenomonal, and, as far fetched as it might be, we're going to make the effort to get him to come speak for Will's endersession if all goes well. Well, the next steps for us are to secure solid interviewees, and make a dent in The Singularity is Near, which on its own should be quite a feat, seeing how dense and intricate Kurzweil's theories and arguments are. All in all I'm very excited to get in over my head in this project, and hopefully be able to dig my way out.

On Consciousness

This week a lot of my attention was focused our upcoming reading project for English. In my group we will be doing a study of consciousness reading Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, Jeff Hawkin's On Intelligence, and Lucid Dreaming. We hope to gain a better understanding of how we perceive the world around us, the affects of technology on our expanding consciousness in the future, and how the brain functions from a neurological standpoint. Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near is a book about the merger between biological evolution and technological evolution, while Lucid Dreaming explores various areas of consciousness and the concept of lucid dreaming.

Also, Adam and I are both hoping to be chosen for Will's endersession on exploring consciousness, and we feel that this project will give us a good foundation going into his class. For the endersession there will be a lot of readings consciousness,and having started The Singularity I can already tell it's going to be helpful to be used to reading dense texts on the scientific aspect of neurological function. I am looking very forward to starting this project and learning about the way our brain perceives reality and the world around us, and possibly being accepted into Will's endersession on exploring consciousness.

Language

This week in English we did various readings on langauge and watched a video on the origin of English. One of the readings in particular were pretty interesting because they talked about the location shift and endangerment of various languages in the world today. Interestingly enough approximately 800 dying languages are represented within the city of New York, many of which are spoken by a higher population there, than it the languages country of origin. Another reading that I found to be particularly interesting was about how the French seem to be losing there language to various other cultures. They react to this in a very odd manner, by which I mean the react somewhat indifferently to the fact that their language is spoken by less French than other cultures, but at the same time, with contempt at other peoples attempting to adopt the language. This way of thinking is not one I am accustomed to for several reasons, the first being that in America, we are essentially a melting-pot of cultures and langauges (as NYC so aptly demonstrates). The second reason is represented abroad in Africa. I have traveled several times to the dark continent, and have gotten a few insights into various cultures there, and after seeing them, I realized that languages there seem to generously and happily shared between peoples. So with these two things defining the way I view the distribution of language between cultures, I was surprised at the French's reaction. I summation, I suppose language can be a thing of personal pride to a nation (or culture), as well as something that is designed to bring serval diverse cultures together, such as Swahili.