Thoughts on the so called "singularity" and nationalistic arrogance.
I got the new issue of Wired in the mail today. Theres an article by Bruce Sterling, sci fi author, about the "singularity", a concept that has been on the mind of "transhumanists" for quite a while. Sterling gives a fairly dierct and basic definition of the singularity. "A moment when runaway advances outstrip human comprehension and all our knowledge and experince becomes useless to the future."

Transhumanists see this happening in the next 40 or so years, in some cases. Quite frankly, I find this entire concept perposterous. But I'm not here to argue the problems with the idea itself, but I would like to say a few things about how it relates to ignorance and nationalism. Most people would be confused at how something like amazing technological change would be linked to ignorance and nationalism, but there is a connection. Every time I've ever seen people talk about the singulairty, they seem to assume tht....

1.Technological advancement will continue totally uninterrupted no matter what. This is not the case, look at the dark ages. A big enough catastrophe can set humanity back significantly.

2.Theres a sort of underlying americanism behind this. The changes that they describe would only apply to America, and to a lesser extent, other wealthy first world countries, and even then, only certian people in those nations would benefit or be largely affected. What about Muslim countries? Villages in India? Africa? The poor in the U.S.? The lower classes? Other cultures will take an entirely different approach to the "singularity" than the U.S. would, and even here, not everyone will look at it the same way the transhumanists would.

I just find that the whole concept has a nationalistic element to it, because it seems that the people who talk about this are only coming from one perspective, that of wealthy white American suburbanites.