Friday’s Big Idea
Today's Big Idea: Humanizing Technology
The concept of the Singularity inspires some people with dread, others with a sense of rapturous bliss. Loosely defined, the Singularity is the future moment when machines become independently intelligent. Futurist Ray Kurzweil and others view it as an opportunity to gain vast knowledge about the human species, cure disease, and profoundly prolong human life.
Novelist Josh Bazell describes the Singularity movement as: "a bunch of wealthy computer people who believe that when computers become sentient it will be possible to interest them in extending the life spans of wealthy computer people."
Either way, progress marches on, and it is in our best interest to examine the best ways of using technology to solve our human problems. In these areas, it is technological optimists like Kurzweil and Jason Silva, and bioethicists like Paul Root Wolpe, and Jacob Appel who are leading the way.
