The Spike
How Our Lives Are Being Transformed by Rapidly Advancing Technologies
Chapter One
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman
intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
-Vernor Vinge, NASA VISION-21 Symposium, 1993
It rushes at you, the future.
Usually we don't notice that. We are unaware of its gallop. Time might not be a
rushing black wall coming at us from the future, but that's surely how it looks
when you stare unflinchingly at the year 2050 and beyond, at the strange
creatures on the near horizon of time (our own grandchildren, or even ourselves,
technologically preserved and enhanced). Call them transhumans or even
posthumans.
The initial transition into posthumanity, for people intimately linked to
specially-designed computerised neural nets, might not wait until 2050. It could
happen even earlier. 2040. 2030. Maybe sooner, as Vinge predicted. This is no
longer the deep, the inconceivably distant future. These are the dates when
quite a few young adul ... read full excerpt from The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed by Rapidly Advancing Technologies ebook
