One rea­son Kurzweil’s charted pre­dic­tion of the Sin­gu­lar­ity is sus­pi­ciously extra-​​super-​​singular::

I’ll tell you why. Because not only is the chart an arti­fi­cial and per­haps even con­scious attempt to fit the data to a pre­de­ter­mined con­clu­sion, but what it actu­ally rep­re­sents is the prox­im­ity of the famil­iar. We are much more aware of inno­va­tions in our cur­rent time and envi­ron­ment, and the far­ther back we look, the blur­rier the dis­tinc­tions get. We may think it’s a grand step for­ward to have these fancy cell phones that don’t tie you to a cord com­ing from the wall, but there was also a time when peo­ple thought it was rad­i­cal to be using this new bow & arrow thingie, instead of the good ol’ atlatl. We just lump that prior event into a “fling­ing pointy things” cat­e­gory and don’t think much of it. When Kurzweil rei­fies biases that way, he gets garbage, like this graph, out.

There’s a worse flaw yet, actu­ally, in the whole backward-​​facing extrav­a­ganza. These “par­a­digm shifts” that keep crop­ping up? So these are sup­pos­edly the equiv­a­lent of phase tran­si­tions in poten­tial, yes? Schum­peter­ian gales of cre­ative destruc­tion and so forth? In with the wire­less, out with the shirt­waist fac­to­ries; in with the lin­guis­tic finesse and effec­tive­ness of mod­erne fuckin’ Eng­lish, and out with illit­er­ate bab­ble of child­ish… well, every­body else in the world. Par­a­digm shift — um, that’s when every­body gives up what they was doin’, and starts on the good stuff. Right?

There are always Late Adopters. Alas, the Late Adopters in these cases can be very late indeed. Check it out: “Eukary­otic cells”! says the chart early on (except there’s way more bac­te­ria, still); “Class Mam­malia”! (except there’s way more bee­tles still); “Human ances­tors walk upright”! (just like a lot of dinosaurs, and all birds. Hey, every­body else! Get with the times! Falling for­ward off-​​balance is the Way to Rule the World!).

How’s that deep argu­ment go? The one often used by those other clear-​​headed thinkers? “If I’m descended from a mon­key, then how come there are there still monkeys?”

Maybe the folks who invoke that sparkling bit of wit, and the Sin­gu­lar­ity Now folks, they should talk. I detect intel­lec­tual lacu­nae they seem to share. What’s the word? Anthro… some­thing. Anthropo– Shoot; tip of my tongue.

What is that word? Some­thing about mid­dles. About the feel­ing that you — or your demo­graphic group, or your race, or your species — are the vital gate­way through which the past will real­ize the future.

It’s that feel­ing every­thing being about you. Anthropo… some­thing. Blast.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Oh yeah! Hubris.

(This, by the way, is also about you. But in a dif­fer­ent way.)