A reader pointed me to the idea of a
Technological Singularity, a point where
computers with human intelligence will spark an exponential growth in
new science that will transform the Earth and life itself.
Well, like the idea of Internet Values
driving politics, you’re soaking in it.
The Singularity, such as it is, has
already arrived. Moore’s Law and its cousins in storage and transport
have made it real. We’re seeing more technological progress, coming
at a faster rate, right now than at any time in the past. And that
rate of progress is continuing to accelerate, despite an anti-science
bias on the party of the U.S., which is the largest tech country.
Now there is a missing ingredient, both
in discussions about the singularity and my own analysis of it. That
missing ingredient is programming. Programmer productivity is
increasing, but only at an arithmetic rate. There is, as yet, no
Moore’s Law of Programming. All that happens is that the other
Moore’s Law impacts cause programming to happen at higher-and-higher
levels of abstraction. But people must still code.
In fact, the West now has a large and
growing shortage of programmers, owing to the enormous new demands of
Moore’s Law-driven technologies combined with the slow pace of
programming productivity gains. As a result the prices for all this
new capacity are dropping to the floor, and aggregate demand is not
growing as it once did.
This problem has yet to be sufficiently
addressed. It must be addressed, because the Global Warming
Singularity either has happened, is about to happen, or is just
around the corner – people disagree. The Arctic ice sheet nearly
disappeared this Summer,
unleashing vast new quantities of methane into the air. Even Siberia
is melting. Will
Florida still exist when it’s time for me to retire, in about 15
years? I don’t know. Not at this rate.
So we have the race of our lives. The
growing supply of technology, matched against a growing global
catastrophe of Dinosaur-like proportions.
Now that’s a singularity I can get
behind.
Exponential growth – like Moore’s ‘law’ – does not give rise to a singularity. No matter how long you go on doubling, the growth is not infinite. And in fact the ‘law’ will not be sustained. The planet will still be here in a million years, but by that time the doubling will have stopped.
– Don’t you think ?
So calling whatever is happening a ‘singularity’ is just hyperbole.
– Wouldn’t you say ?
Exponential growth – like Moore’s ‘law’ – does not give rise to a singularity. No matter how long you go on doubling, the growth is not infinite. And in fact the ‘law’ will not be sustained. The planet will still be here in a million years, but by that time the doubling will have stopped.
– Don’t you think ?
So calling whatever is happening a ‘singularity’ is just hyperbole.
– Wouldn’t you say ?