Video-Future-Tech

The Singularity is Near

The point of the next few weeks for me, and it should be for you, as I will repeatedly emphasize, is not whether he is right or wrong about his time frames or even the specifics of his projections. It is about the direction our technology is headed and the pace of the changes and the types of changes we are likely to see in our lives in the next two decades

Kurzweil has now written what may be his opus, "The Singularity is Near." If you are at all interested in what the future might hold, and are not afraid to get out of your box, you should get this book and read it.

Warning: it is not light reading, and I am not referring to the fact the book weighs a few pounds. There are over 150 pages of footnotes and index. The book itself is 500 pages of the fascinating story of our future technological potentials, plus intriguing stories of what is happening today. (For instance, scientists at that hotbed of scientific research, the University of Oklahoma, have demonstrated a "molecular photography" technique for storing 1,024 bits of information in a single liquid-crystal molecule comprising nineteen hydrogen atoms. Talk about the potential for small storage devices!)

What is The Singularity?

Kurzweil suggests it is a future period in which technological progress becomes so rapid that it radically transforms humankind. The difference between human and our machines becomes less and less as we adapt to an increasingly technological civilization. Increasingly, out nanotech starts to inhabit our bodies.

"To picture the singularity, imagine computers trillions of times smarter than Newton, Einstein and Edison inventing new technologies while continually enhancing their own abilities. Kurzweil argues that the Singularity will occur around 2045." (James Miller - cf. below.)

Why would we do this? Because, Kurzweil suggests, it improves our lives, one small bit by bit at a time. A drug here, gene therapy there, enhanced ability to access information directly, it slowly and then rapidly invades our lives and bodies. While you might resist, your kids won't and your grandkids 20 years from now will see it as their birthright.

Further, each and every step makes economic and business sense. Who doesn't want to live longer and healthier? Have faster communications? Easier lives and more fun? It is the same path we have been on for centuries. It is one where entrepreneurs use technology to try and improve our lives, and at the same time improve their bottom lines.

What kind of pace of change are we talking about? Kurzweil has a team of ten who track the progress of technology and predict where it will be in ten or twenty or one hundred years. It helps that he has been right more often than not. This was written in 2001:

"The first technological steps--sharp edges, fire, the wheel--took tens of thousands of years. For people living in this era, there was little noticeable technological change in even a thousand years. By 1000 A.D., progress was much faster and a paradigm shift required only a century or two. In the nineteenth century, we saw more technological change than in the nine centuries preceding it. Then in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, we saw more advancement than in all of the nineteenth century. Now, paradigm shifts occur in only a few years time. The World Wide Web did not exist in anything like its current form just a few years ago; it didn't exist at all a decade ago.

"The paradigm shift rate (i.e., the overall rate of technical progress) is currently doubling (approximately) every decade; that is, paradigm shift times are halving every decade (and the rate of acceleration is itself growing exponentially). So, the technological progress in the twenty-first century will be equivalent to what would require (in the linear view) on the order of two hundred centuries. In contrast, the twentieth century saw only about twenty-five years of progress (again at today's rate of progress) since we have been speeding up to current rates. So the twenty-first century will see almost a thousand times greater technological change than its predecessor."

Although the vast majority of the thousand times greater technological change Ray is talking about happens in the last part of this century, some of it happens in the next twenty years. How much change are we talking about? Well, from when he first penned those words, the pace of change has picked up. At current levels, that means the twentieth century was equivalent to about twenty years of progress at today's rate of change. That pace will continue to increase the amount of innovation we pack into just a few years. From his book Fantastic Voyage (also highly recommended book on health and living longer):

"...And we'll make another twenty years of progress at today's rate [of growth], equivalent to that of the entire twentieth century, in the next fourteen years. And then we'll do it again in just seven years."

That means in the next twenty-one years we will see double the technological change that we saw in the entire twentieth century. At that pace, we will see almost four times the rate of change within twenty-five years.

James Miller at Tech Central Station reviewed the book. Writing in his blog, he notes:

"But the Singularity doesn't appear near. This is because most of us are used to linear thinking and haven't yet grasped the implications of the exponential growth of information technologies. For example, assume that the power of computers doubles every generation. Further assume that so far 100 generations have passed and our computers have but one-billionth of the power needed to achieve the Singularity. How many more doubling generations would be needed for humanity to reach this singularity? Well, linear thinking would say that since it took 100 generations to get one-billionth of the way there it will take a total of 100 billion generations to make it all the way. But if computer power doubles every generation, then it would take only 30 more generations for computer power to increase a billion fold.

"The human brain is a much faster information processor than even the best of today's computers. But the regular doubling of computing power means computers will quickly reach human equivalence. Kurzweil estimates this will happen by the early 2030s."

(http://www.techcentralstation.com/081505C.html)

The Accelerating Pace of Change

I keep emphasizing this accelerating pace of change. It is critical for you to grasp it. It matters not one whit whether Kurzweil is right about something called the Singularity, or whether machines will in some far-off future merge with humans. First, it is way off in the future, far too far for most of us to concern ourselves with. Second, it is pretty far out. Who knows, and I am certainly not saying it will (or won't) happen. There is a lot of future in our lives before we get there.

The point is that over the next 20 years things are going to change faster than you now think they will. Much faster. The financial plans you are making, the business plans you project, may all have to be thought through one more time.

There are going to be opportunities which we can only now begin to faintly see. As time goes on, advances in health care, which we will visit next week, may make it possible for you to live a lot longer than you now plan. There is reason, as I will show, to think a lot of my boomer generation will make it to 100. Put that into Social Security and Medicare cost plans, not to mention your retirement plans.

A lot of what we think is science fiction is going to happen in the next 20 years. If we stretch it to 30 years it will look like magic.

(For those who want to do a little advance homework, we will be looking at another very important book by Jeff Hawkins called "On Intelligence". You can buy them both at once at Amazon and get free shipping. (www.amazon.com) Hawkins has a quite different view of how things progress, but no less profound in terms of the prospects for change.

Over the next few weeks, in addition to my usual economic comments, we will explore some of what Kurzweil, Hawkins and others see in our future. I will try and comment on what that might mean in practical terms for us. Stick with me. This is going to be a fun trip.

On a personal note, I know that many of you will not like the thought about so much changing. I should point out that a lot will not change as well. There are certain values which are indeed ageless. In an age of increasing change, those things like our core beliefs, family and friends will be all the more important as anchors in the wind of change. Hold on to them and build them now. They are going to be important. In fact, one of the points I will make is that personal relationships in a virtual world are going to be critical.

It is time to hit the send button. Let's remember those in the way of Rita and pray things go better than it looks right now. (For the many who have asked, my part of Texas (Dallas-Fort Worth) is 250 miles from the coast. All we will get is some much-needed rain, although maybe more than we want in a short period. It is the people on the coast who have problems.

Your really positive about the future analyst,

John Mauldin

JohnMauldin@InvestorsInsight.com

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