After the Singularity

Mitchell Porter (mitch@thehub.com.au)
Tue, 22 Jul 1997 16:18:16 +1000 (EST)


In the interests of forming a clearer concept of the future...
Does anyone have any suggestions regarding what might *not*
have changed, after a Singularity? For example, the
fundamental laws of physics, whatever they are, should
presumably remain as they were. Perhaps there are economic
laws that would remain valid (but will there still be
"markets"?).

Perhaps the consequences of a Singularity are highly
contingent, in that they depend critically upon the
goals of the beings that survive the nano-wars, or
Transcend first, or whatever. The characteristic shared
by the definitions of Singularity that I can think of
is that they all refer to technology. Whatever else
it is, the Singularity is a point at which "godlike"
technologies arrive, technologies with which one might
reshape the universe or construct new ones. The
consequences of the Singularity depend on what is done
with those technologies; what does *that* depend on?

-mitch
http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch