Akkam’s Razor

The next big social and cultural debate in the United States will not be secularlism versus religion, but technology and progress versus antiquity.

Witness this blog post on zdnet regarding the Singularity and via the Singularity Institute:

Sometime in the next few years or decades, humanity will become capable of surpassing the upper limit on intelligence that has held since the rise of the human species. We will become capable of technologically creating smarter-than-human intelligence, perhaps through enhancement of the human brain, direct links between computers and the brain, or Artificial Intelligence. This event is called the "Singularity" by analogy with the singularity at the center of a black hole - just as our current model of physics breaks down when it attempts to describe the center of a black hole, our model of the future breaks down once the future contains smarter-than-human minds. Since technology is the product of cognition, the Singularity is an effect that snowballs once it occurs - the first smart minds can create smarter minds, and smarter minds can produce still smarter minds.

Contrast that with this commencement address given by the President of the United States, George W. Bush at Oklahoma State at their 2006 Commencement:

"Science offers the prospect of eventual cures for terrible diseases — and temptations to manipulate life and violate human dignity," Bush said during commencement exercises at Oklahoma State University. "With the Internet, you can communicate instantly with someone halfway across the world — and isolate yourself from your family and your neighbors."

The nation's young generation will wrestle to resolve these dilemmas, he said.

"My advice: Harness the promise of technology without becoming slaves to technology. My advice is that science serves the cause of humanity and not the other way around," the president said.