IEEE Spectrum June, 2008 - 20

t HE SiN G u L A rit Y | SpE ciA L rEp O rt

tEcHNOLOGicAL
cONVErGENcE WiLL
cHANGE Our LiVES
But WON't mAKE tHEm
iNDEFiNitELY LONG
BY GLENN zOrpEttE

The singularity is supposed to begin shortly after
engineers build the first computer with greater-thanhuman intelligence. That achievement will trigger a
series of cycles in which superintelligent machines
beget even smarter machine progeny, going from generation to generation in weeks or days rather than
decades or years. The availability of all that cheap,
mass-produced brilliance will spark explosive economic growth, an unending, hypersonic, technoindustrial rampage that by comparison will make the
Industrial Revolution look like a bingo game.
At that point, we will have been sucked well beyond
the event horizon of the singularity. It might be nice
there, on the other side-by definition, you can't know
for sure. Sci-fi writers, though, have served up lots of
scenarios in which humankind becomes the prey, rather
than the privileged beneficiaries, of synthetic savants.
But the singularity is much more than a sci-fi subgenre. A lot of smart people buy into it in one form or
another-there are versions that dispense with the

Across cultures, classes, and aeons,
people have yearned to transcend
death. ¶ Bear that history in mind as you
consider the creed of the singularitarians.
Many of them fervently believe that in the
next several decades we'll have computers
into which you'll be able to upload your consciousness-the mysterious thing that makes
you you. Then, with your consciousness able
to go from mechanical body to mechanical
body, or virtual paradise to virtual paradise, you'll never need to face death, illness,
bad food, or poor cellphone reception. ¶ Now
you know why the singularity has also been
called the rapture of the geeks.
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NA * iEEE SpEctrum * juNE 2008

life-everlasting stuff. There are academic gatherings
and an annual conference at Stanford. There are bestselling books, audiotapes, and videos. Scheduled for
release this summer is a motion picture, The Singularity
Is Near, starring the actress Pauley Perrette and a
gaggle of aging boffins who've never acted in a movie.
(Without any apparent irony, the picture's producers
call it "a true story about the future.")
There's also a drumbeat of respectful and essentially credulous articles in the science press. Unlike
stories about UFOs or zero-pollution energy sources,
singularity stories don't exact from editors a steep payment in self-respect. That's because of the impressive
attainments-albeit usually in fields unrelated to neuroscience or biology-of some of the people who chirp
about mind uploading and nanomachine organ repair.
The leading spokesman for the life-everlasting version
of the singularity is the entrepreneur and inventor Ray
Kurzweil, who's also behind the movie The Singularity
Is Near and a recent book of the same title.
Why should a mere journalist question Kurzweil's
conclusion that some of us alive today will live indefinitely? Because we all know it's wrong. We can sense it
in the gaping, take-my-word-for-it extrapolations and
the specious reasoning of those who subscribe to this
form of the singularity argument. Then, too, there's the
flawed grasp of neuroscience, human physiology, and
philosophy. Most of all, we note the willingness of these
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2008