The Concept of Singularity

The article on Singularity called 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal, written by Lev Grossman, reveals many interesting concepts that Raymond Kurzweil has been building on since 1965. Kurzweil believes that in the future we will be able to “scan our consciousnesses into computers and enter a virtual existence or swap our bodies for immortal robots and light out for the edges of space as intergalactic godlings”. Although this may seem impossible at this point in time, based off of his point that technology is growing exponentially, I understand how this could definitely become a possibility in the future.

However, my understanding of the possibility does not mean that I would altogether support something like this. I agree that using technology to improve our lives by eliminating sickness or other related things could be beneficial to us, but the concept of infinitely continuing one’s life seems wrong. Not for any spiritual reason, but solely because if one was to stay alive forever, wouldn’t that be one less open spot for a new consciousness? I feel like if we were all to continue to live forever, that would take away the chance of any new life that should have come after us. This is similar to the novel because everyone is predestined to be a certain way, so who they would be if they were allowed to just be themselves is taken away.

The ability to merge with technology does open the possibility of becoming less human, at least in the eyes of the present. Being human seems to imply sickness, emotion, death, etc. However, this merge would affect all of these. Nonetheless, as technology exponentially grows, couldn’t our perception of what it means to be human also change? Basically, what we believe it means to be human right now would not compare to what we would believe it means to be human once we started merging with technology. So if one views it like that, than at the point in time that we could actually accomplish this, nothing drastic would really change in how “human” we are.

            I do not believe Bernard is just being romantic believing that there is a higher level of living that man can get to. Yes, technology has the potential to improve our lives. But if we lose sight of the reasons we are trying to better our lives, than there really is no point. For instance, in Brave New World, everyone is working towards perfecting their society. However, no one really has an original thought, and they have no reason to improve their society other than the reasons they have been brainwashed to believe. Bernard’s thinking has led me to believe that a better world would be a place where everyone is working to make our society better, not because they have been programmed to do so, but because they genuinely want to make this a better place.