The future started fifty years ago, when mathematician John von Neumann noticed
that the geometrically accelerating pace of technological progress "gives the
appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race
beyond which human affairs as we know them could not continue."
The most famous futurist living today, Dr. Ray Kurzweil, transformed von Neumann's
insight into a mathematical predictor that has, so far, correctly foreseen by
over a decade specific things like the internet explosion, handheld reading devices
for the blind (predicted down to the exact year), and the year a computer would
be crowned chess champion (he was off by one year).
Now he is predicting that by the early 2030s, we'll have "eliminated the heart,
lungs, red and white blood cells, platelets, pancreas, thyroid and all the hormone-producing
organs, kidneys, bladder, liver, lower esophagus, stomach, small intestines, large
intestines, and bowel. What we have left at this point is the skeleton, skin,
sex organs, sensory organs, mouth and upper esophagus, and brain." The eliminated
parts will be replaced by nanobots. In the meantime, medical technology will start
to correct some of the biological causes of aging, further increasing our lifespan,
hopefully long enough to reach the "third bridge," where computers become powerful
enough to download our personalities. At this point, the singularity, we become
pure information. Keep a backup copy in case of crashes, and you can live forever.
Human beings don't easily grasp the full mathematical power of exponential growth,
but even those who've never heard of the coming technological singularity feel
its approach, and new media artists have been giving us Heironymous Bosch-meets-Neuromancer
glimpses of what it will look like.
Synthetic Times: Media Art China 2008 is a Beijing Olympics cultural project opening at the National Art Museum of
China in June 2008. At a preview symposium held in New York City on April 15th
at MoMa, Parsons, the New School for Design, and Eyebeam, in conjunction with
the National Art Museum of China, media art pundits debated issues revolving around
exhibition themes like Beyond Body; Emotive Digital; The Recombinant Reality;
and Here, There and Everywhere-themes that might as well have been called The Coming of the Singularity.
The symposium was opened by Synthetic Times curator Zhang Ga, who coincidentally is also the Visual Art Advisor for the
2008 World Science Festival (May 28 to June 1) at which Kurzweil unveiled his
latest predictions.
...read more on C-Arts Magazine (ISSUE#04)
