The Singularity

IEEE Spectrum has an interesting issue devoted to looking at the subject of the Singularity. An intriguing topic, but I definitely remain a skeptic about the wilder predictions of transhumanism. It seems to me that some of its proponents haven’t thought through some of the tricky issues which were dealt with back in The Mind’s I, first published in 1981. Indeed, I came across one of the principle stumbling blocks in Clifford Simak’s Way Station, first published in 1963. A copy is not the same thing as an original, no matter how identical it might be – and the image of the tanks of acid below Simak’s "farmhouse" haunted my teenage mind for some time.