Transcendent Man

The “Transcendent Man” struck me as both interesting and frightening. It was interesting because it covered a lot of things that are going on in today’s world that I sometimes take for granted and frightening because of how some of the predictions for the future seemed to be fairly believable. The advanced technology that everyone has available to them, the contradicting opinions and the possibilities predicted for the future made me think more in depth on the concept of whether or not singularity will or already has started.

The Internet hasn’t been around for too long but has already managed to impact the way people live, communicate and socialize throughout society. Texting, tagging, blogging, and much more have taken over the way that we write and communicate with friends, family, etc. One of the things that Ray Kurzweil talked about when it came to singularity was how over the course of these past years, technology has made an “explosion” in regards to advancement and how he predicts that the insertion of computers the size of blood cells in people will just become another step in this process. Kurzweil seems to focus on the optimistic aspects of this working and doesn’t really talk about what things could go wrong if this is done. I believe that implantation will cause a huge debate between people who will embrace this process and people who won’t.

Kurzweil talks about how his father continues to be an important aspect of his life and how he (not only hopes) but also truly believes that he will be able to bring him back from the dead through technology. I think it’s safe to say that everyone who’s lost a loved one would want to be able to bring them back but most would say that technology is not the way. It could be argued that humanity would be altered in their definitions of life, death, mortality, and immortality. If these things were to become true and people no longer died but their memories, personalities and thoughts were transferred into a machine, would we still be able to still continue to be human? I don’t think that we would be able to because we would lose the emotional part that makes us human beings. What was frightening to me was that one man who was working on making the AI brain was willing to risk this kind of consequence just to see if it was possible to create such a machine.

I can’t say I believe that singularity is coming but I will agree with Kurzweil’s statement that technology is advancing more rapidly than it has in the past couple years and our generation is a large part of it. However, I don’t think that it is necessary for people to implant computers into their bodies in order to continue with technology’s flight. Kurzweil doesn’t talk about there being any other option besides doing this and it would be interesting to see what goes on with technology in the years to come until his predicted date for singularity in 2029.