Singularitists—men and women futurists made up of individuals with careers as diverse as engineers and artists, cybernetic experts and biologists, physicists and poets—see knowledge and technology reaching a single point where everything comes together creating a symbiotic explosion of new knowledge and supersonic advancement propelling the world into a supercivilization of technological wonders all controlled by technology-augmented superminds.
Achieving the Singularity, they believe, will permit the creation of the transhuman: the next evolutionary stage of the human race. The mind, will be freed from the shackles of haphazard natural selection and evolution will forge ahead with humans in control creating their own evolutionary development and tailoring the world—and eventually the cosmos—to meet the needs of a race of superhumans—incredibly advanced humans leaving mere humanity far behind.
To achieve this, Singularitists must vastly expand the mind and its capabilities, and achieve virtual immortality along the way. Death must be conquered. Can mortality be defeated? Some believe it can and are working feverishly to accomplish that.
A significant number of Singularitists are working on immortality projects right now.
Blueprint for immortality: upload the mind
One advocate of achieving immortality is Ian Pearson, a British futurist, who asks: why not upload everything that’s in the brain—everything that makes a person who they are—into a computer and then download it again into a new body? Doing such a thing, he argues, would make the individual theoretically immortal.
For such a thing to work, more advancements will be needed in the hardware and the software, and better interfaces will have to be developed between the human brain and the silicon brain.
Yet how to get there from here is not insurmountable, and some experts predict the technology will be attained by 2020, just right years from now.
If there are unexpected breakthroughs with quantum computers the time line will be shortened considerably.
Man-machine hybrids
Ray Kurzweil, promoter of, what he calls “accelerating intelligence,” is a proponent of singularitarianism and an advocate of man-machine amalgams. “The Singularity,” declares Kurzweil, will be achieved when “the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep…that technology appears to be expanding at infinite speed.”
Some ethicists, scientists, political leaders, and religious groups view the entire movement with alarm. They believe the scope and ultimate goals of the transhumanists are to establish a human beehive with scientific philosopher kings—immortal and with godlike minds—ruling the world.
Is the Singularity Movement some crackpot idea promoted by a group of fringe scientists? No. NASA is promoting it, professors at some of the world’s top universities, engineers, geneticists, biochemists, cybernetic experts, robotics experts, artificial intelligence experts are too—the list is lengthy and impressive.
Even the Pentagon has joined the movement. Military scientists have jumped aboard the Singularity express. They see future soldiers operating as a single unit with a community mind (read “hive mind”). The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has many projects on their own wish list that include elements of singularity.
The nano-world and Singularitists
Nano-technology is all the rage, and for good reason. Imagine machines the size of molecules curing all diseases, or a swarm of tiny construction bots building a house within one day. Those are just two of the many applications that nano-technology will revolutionize. Technologist see almost limitless applications for nano-technology applied to the materials sciences, medicine, space exploration, climate manipulation, deep see mining, and so on.
Singularists in the transhuman movement are pushing for nano-technology to assist in their quest for man-machine interfaces and increasing the biological capabilities of the human body.
Nan-technologies can also be created or adapted to turbocharge the brain and make it operate as fast or faster than the speediest supercomputers of the future, able to calculate and analyze at speeds measures in the hundreds of quadrillions per second.
IQs will become meaningless as transhumans approach the heady powers once only associated with mythological gods.
Supergeniuses currently have intelligence quotients above 200. The transhumans shaping the future will have IQs in the tens of thousands.
The nano-world will create the wonders of the macro-world and possibly be directly controlled by pure thought—managing everything at the speed of light.
3D bio printing: pathway to immortality
Some transhumanists see 3D technology as one more pathway towards achieving biological immortality.
A revolutionary technology—now in its infancy—is called the 3D bio-printer. Some day in the not-too-distant-future you might need a new kidney, a liver, or a spleen. If you do, your doctor will simply scan your DNA, enter the parameters into a computer, and then print out your new organ for you.
The ability to print out solid objects from computer programs has been used in the plastics industry for many years. The technology’s been adapted to print bio-material such as blood vessels and ultimately teeth, bone tissue and organs.
Although translating the technology from plastics to bio-materials has taken time, prototypes of whole organs are already being printed.
How it works
Cells are harvested from a patient’s body. This assures a DNA match. The cells are built in layers with a thin layer of “bio-paper gel” between them—not unlike building a tower of Oreo cookies with cream-filling between each layer.
As the building process continues, following a computer generated model of the intricate bio-structure, the gel gradually dissipates and the layered cells join together forming a complete structure.
No risk of rejection
The human body’s immune system is engineered to attack anything it senses as a foreign object or intruder. Tricking or battling the immune system has been one of the major ongoing hurdles of organ transplant medical procedures.
Because a patient’s own DNA is used in the process, there’s no risk of rejection with the 3D printing method and applications can be adopted to work directly on body.
Replacing Man with super-Man
Many Singularitists and transhumanists believe that most of Mankind will not easily adapt the transition from lowly human to proto-god. They foresee a schism developing between what once was the homogeneous human, culminating in two distinct races: traditional, slow-witted, rather dull humans and the new elite, godlike transhumans. The immortal transhumans will stride head and shoulders above mere mortal humans, directing the hordes of their once fellow men and women onwards into a glorious future filled with titanic advances, miraculous machines, technological marvels and the final destiny of Mankind.
The Singularitists see a shining Nirvana beckoning to them on the horizon. They are giddy. It’s almost with their grasp…
Others, who aren’t so sure of the Singularity vision, caution that the “shining Nirvana” lying ahead may actually be the glow reflected from the burning pits of Hell.
