Paul Allen knows business & marketing, but when it comes to all things Singularity, he’s an armchair intellectual who hasn’t actually done anything of note in the field. Kurzweil was making computers compose original music in 1965. Oh snap?
Juan Enriquez says the ability to re-engineer living things and engineer entirely new ones is far and away the biggest thing since a bunch of other big things (even bigger than the industrial revolution). So… Cool, yeah?
Perhaps unconsciously, Allen is asserting the primacy of human intelligence in our known universe – a cognitive barrier beyond which nothing can pass – because evolution made it… or something. Paul, an AI doesn’t have to be smart LIKE us, just as smart AS us. Namsayen?
Through the Sci-Fi Nomenclature Committee approved processes of a brain interface known as “ECoG,” the science guys have shown that, even after 7 years without any actual movement, the brain is still sending signals for the body to do so. And these signals can move a robot.
That kinda looks like the Death Star in an eyeball. Here’s a very nice gallery of transhumanist art (PART II). It’s cool. Go look at it. One day we’ll become it. Which is going to be awesome – because my knees are like totally shot. [VIA SINGULARITY HUB]
In the context of our perception of linear time, the march toward radically upgrading the human experience is not a “switch-on” process, it’s not sudden, it’s not merely a download away. It’s an ongoing-for-quite-a-while-now, subtle, and steadily accelerating merger.
This is that important moment in the genesis of a technology. That which we’ll one day look back and somewhat condescendingly comment: A: ”Remember when the Dream Movies™ were just vague blobs?” B: ”Shhhhh, stop talking during Bob’s flying sequence!”