I’ve bought my copy of Kurzweil’s new book, but haven’t cracked the cover… yet. It’s definitely on my must read list. After watching him speak at this years Accelerating Change, I look at the singularity a bit differently. I’ve basically been a singularity nerd my whole life. How exactly I might define singularity has changed several times, but I’ve consistently been attracted to the idea that we are on the verge of making a discovery that will change everything about the meaning that we make of the world. This passion has meant that I can share my views with acquaintances in any sub-domain that I happen to be interested in, but it’s a real challenge to find those souls who are trying to grok the big picture in a way that seems native to me. Science is often too dry, science fiction, even the hard stuff, is often too frivolous (or becomes so after a while). Pragmatism seems lifeless and new-age is too juicy, to the point of being squishy. I’ve been doing my own cognitive mashups of these various domains for most of my life, but haven’t taken the time to jot the thoughts on paper.
But this issue of the singularity as it was approached at AC2005 approximated my imaginary mashups more precisely than any single event ever had. It is time to start paying attention to futurists — not necessarily because they have the answers, but rather because they are some of the few who are asking the right questions. Take a moment to glance up from your keyboard and remember the things that are taken for granted today that we didn’t have as kids. Talking about the way things were when you were a kid starts to sound like that “three miles in the snow, up hill both ways” kind of tale. Now think about the stuff that is common today that was unimaginable 10 years ago. Everyone having a cell-phone. Remember five years ago, imagine that everyone has a web presence. Remember last year and imagine that everyone you know has heard of del.icio.us and is wondering what it means.
Yes, the singularity is near, but once again, we’re looking in the wrong place. At the AC2005, the focus was AI and IA (intelligence amplification), and most of this work is being done in schools and labs. These are the predictable places where we might expect innovations to come from. These are the people who are paying a hefty price to make themselves sufficiently accident prone that the next big accident that turns the world on its head might have a chance of occurring on their watch.
But more likely, the event is already happening somewhere else. In my rush to get up to speed with RSS and feedburner, I’ve neglected my Wired subscription of late. A monthly print magazine just can’t pack the whallop that feedburner can anymore; it lacks the edge for me that it used to have. That edge is what fueled my way from cover to cover with each issue for the past eight years or so. But the pink covered November issue grabbed my attention again and I flipped from the back forward, now impatient with the warm-up acts that fill the first two thirds. I came upon the story about Fly from LeapFrog. This $99 kids toy is much more than it first appears. I don’t care if it catches on or not. In this day and age of mashups and hacking, this thing has capabilities that are just begging to be extended.
I know that it doesn’t have all of the functionality that I want right now, but just wait. This is disruptive technology like we haven’t seen before. Not because of cpu horsepower, or cutting edge graphics, but because it interfaces with our thinking in a way that unleashes potential that has been lying dormant for quite some time.
Imagine, say, version 3.0 of the Fly. It is wirelessly connected (wi-fi or blue-tooth, or whatever), it can record audio and video, and synchonize it with the stylus activity, it is GPS enabled. Now think of TiVo for your conversations and experiences with real-time tagability, and sharable withing ad-hoc peer groups of mutual trust. This changes the classroom environment considerably. Old-schoolers will immediately think of the potential for chaos and how hard it will be to control the situation. Flip it instead to seeing that chaos as an interesting asset. The facilitator (formerly called a teacher) changes roles; no longer is the job about disseminating information to the masses, but rather it now becomes more like conducting a symphony of minds. Introduce a concept and contextualize it until someone gets it, and then let them expound until it starts to spread and catch fire for the rest of the kids. What if, instead of thinking about pre-scripted lesson plans, the facilitator was freed to assist in exploration, looking for ways that existing activities and presently relevent interests can be folded into a dynamic curriculum, with real-time feedback on how well each student is grasping the concepts based on their participation?
The vision I’m seeing is at least two, and perhaps four, jumps ahead of where we are. Don’t focus on the specifics. Look at the trend. I’ve been looking for a good way to convey the concept of the “singularity” for my friends who’ve never heard the term. How about this: remember that exercise where we looked around at technology that is hard to remember living without? When our kids get that feeling every day about the stuff they know today that they didn’t know yesterday, the generation gap will effectively narrow in terms of age (18 year olds will seem as old and out of it as grandparents to 10 year olds), and yet the chasm between generations will deepen so profoundly that it will effectively be an impassable mote.
Adults don’t have the kind of plasticity that will allow them to change fast enough to keep up with change at singularity speeds, but our kids do. And this new world is just this moment opening up for them. Want to watch the birth of the singularity. Follow the children and see if you can keep up.
