Recent Features
| |||||||||||||
Likely singularitiesLikely singularitiesPosted Dec 10, 2008 22:55 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)In reply to: Likely singularities by ncm Parent article: Interview: Vernor Vinge
History has seen many singularities, but none yet worldwide unless you count internet, air travel, telegraph, railroad, agriculture, etc. Interesting. Can you elaborate on that, please?
(Log in to post comments)
Likely singularities Posted Dec 11, 2008 2:51 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
It's a bit off-topic, but read "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. Read it for its own sake. It includes examples of singularities successfully averted.
Most of my examples above are not so great; probably the global singularities in our past are actually limited to adoption of agriculture and, earlier, language, and the near-extinction event ca. 50K B.P. (maybe a climate-affecting eruption).
As noted elsewhere, a Vinge singularity is just an event after which the world becomes incomprehensible to someone raised before it occurred.
Likely singularities Posted Dec 11, 2008 14:08 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]
I'm sure that happened to me in about 1991...
|
|||||||||||||