The internet is the singularity?

It was something David and Doc said on Twit’s Trianglation #186.

David compared the internet to the transformation of language. Doc added the internet renders distance to zero, which is pretty amazing to think about when looking at the cluetrain rules especially my favourite one – Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. This is only possible because of the internet era.

This got me thinking, if the internet is as transformational as language, and there’s thought that language could be one of the first singularities. Then that would make the internet the singularity?

This raises a ton of observations I and others have wondered about.

• What technologies are likely to cause the next singularity?
• When will the next singularity happen?

and my own…

• Will we know, we are experiencing a singularity as we are in one? (getting meta about the singularity). Maybe the internet is the singularity and things like the cluetrain is actually carving out the new rules?

Luckily, Doc and David will be talking to us via the singularity in Manchester for the Commonground launch event. You can still get tickets. How’s that for a launch event? We are forever thankful they agreed to take part.

Talking of singularities…

Ray Kurzweil and others have been talking about how they would like to see stricter controls on artificial intelligence, assuming the singularity is closer than we think.

Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, has estimated that robots will reach human levels of intelligence by 2029, purportedly leaving us about 14 years to reign supreme.

Of course theres always the other view, from the rich and educated.

Now I wonder what happened to the energy singularity?