Andrés Vaccari

The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
By Ray Kurzweil

(The Australian December 17-18, 2005)

Our bodies will soon be obsolete. Genetic engineering, smart drugs and nanotechnology will reverse the ageing process and make us immortal. Machines will do all the unpleasant work for us, producing all the energy we need. We will download our minds into powerful computers and become superintelligent, disembodied beings. We will be able to change bodies at will and inhabit virtual worlds of our making. And all of this will happen in our lifetime, for we are approaching the Singularity: a point at which scientific advance will happen so fast that technology will become indistinguishable from magic.

This is the picture of the future presented in Ray Kurzweil’s new book, The Singularity is Near. A renowned inventor and entrepreneur, Kurzweil is a leading voice of the Extropian (or Transhuman) movement, which preaches that we are on the threshold of a golden age of techno-supermen. Unsurprisingly, Extropianism is largely a US phenomenon, combining two potent American traditions: Christian millenarianism and the cult of technology. This enthusiastic brand of futurism might appear harmless, charming even. But it has an ugly side.

Kurzweil’s central belief is that technological and scientific progress is exponential. That is, science and technology do not simply improve, but the rate of progress also accelerates, tending towards infinity, at which point we will experience “an expansion of human intelligence by a factor of trillions through merger with its nonbiological form”. A variation on the Enlightenment myth of rational progress, Kurzweil’s model departs from a restricted notion of technology (basically, processing power). In the final analysis, it is based on a bad inference.
Kurzweil’s technological determinism is equally myopic. The political and social environment, which shapes the nature and direction of technology, is completely missing from his picture. Technology is neither an autonomous force, nor an “outgrowth” or “continuation” of biological evolution. The recent debacle concerning AIDS drugs for Africa underscores the fact that technology means nothing in the face of political unwillingness and the profit motive. ‘Life extension’ can be granted right now to most of the world’s disadvantaged with remarkably low-tech means, such as food and cheap medicines.

An entrenched political conservatism underlies the transhuman vision of the future. Social change is not necessary for Kurzweil, since it will be precipitated by the “inherent acceleration” of technological progress, and driven by the free market model. Today’s machines represent the principles of the neoliberal economy, just like in the sixteenth century the mechanical clock embodied the values of the monarchic state. Robots and computer systems ‘self-organize’, just like selfish individuals under the ‘Invisible Hand’ of the market. And technology gets better and cheaper all the time, so that eventually it will ‘trickle down’ to the poorest people; just like capital does in right-wing economics. The Singularity, Kurzweil tells us, is an economic imperative. Just like human knowledge, economic growth is also exponential, and the market will become the main engine of future change. We will not only be immortal but filthy rich.

Incredibly, Kurzweil argues that factories and farm jobs in the US have dropped from 60 percent to 6 percent due to automation; no mention of Third World sweatshops or corporate outsourcing and downsizing. He even argues that modern day warfare claims fewer casualties, thanks to more accurate weapons. We should mention that Kurzweil is an advisor to the US military, and sits on the board of directors of Seegrid, a robotics company that subcontracts to the US Army (and founded by fellow extropian Hans Moravec). This may explain the absence of any ethical concerns in his discussion of the military applications of new technology.

Also central to Kurzeil’s argument is the notion that our minds can be copied into computers built in the image of the brain. This runs against gigantic problems, and relies on a number of unproven assumptions. The information sciences have sparked the mystic belief that everything is made of ethereal data, and that consciousness or identity can be separated from the complex electro-biochemical dynamics of the brain. This is a curious technological rewriting of the notion of the individual soul, transcendent from embodiment. It may be a reassuring story, but there’s no evidence to support it. Kurzweil believes that the simulation of intelligence (or consciousness, he can’t see the difference) is a matter of fast processing power.

But Kurzweil is not speaking to our more rational instincts. Though dressed in the garbs of science, these fantasies are addressed mainly to the anxieties of ageing baby boomers. As the governments of first world nations brace themselves for an imminent, huge swell in the population of elderly and retirees, this vision of a future ruled by an army of narcissistic baby boomer cyborgs sounds like a bad joke. Kurzweil, however, feels naturally entitled to the fruits of the latest biomedical knowledge. And he has some ideas on how to handle the accompanying strain on economic and natural resources: nanobots will produce all the energy we need, cheaply and in an environmentally sustainable manner. And the oil giants don’t need to worry, since the nanobots will clean the environment too.

For most of its history, technology has remained inseparable from religion, illusionism and magical thinking. Things haven’t changed much, and modern science and technology continue to inspire beliefs as baroque as anything concocted by our forebears. The road to the uncertain future is littered with the carcasses of brave new worlds that never were. So far, the only reliable law of futurism was pronounced by J. G. Ballard: “If enough people predict something, it won’t happen.”