Commenting on a previous post I tried to argue that other economic hinges would have seemed just as transformational as 1870 to those who lived near them - whether for good or ill - and I was struggling to figure out whether it's tempting to think of 1870 as the biggest deal because it's closer. You've won me over that far - I'm still inclined to think that *all human history is hinge*, but you've convinced me that the acceleration of economic growth above the population level (a) happened in/around 1870 and (b) was a profound shift in the fundamentals of being human.
Still not down with it being the truest hing in human history, because while is may have been the hinge that made the most difference to the lived experience of the most people (so far), I can think of another axis for hinges which have been or may one day be equally transformational. That is, information sharing/mental alignment/the increasing complexity of communications by which we become the anthology intelligence that is humanity. Possible hinges: the invention of language, the printing press, the world wide web (near-instantaneous transmission of thought), in the direct brain-to-brain transfer (if that is ever more popular than the current near-instantaneous version of the web which at least allows for some illusion of individual control).
Why does it have to be one or the other? Or, why assume only one Singularity?
If the Singularity is the point beyond which we cannot see, because our assumptions and predictions about what is possible break down in the face of new technology, the implications for society of which we cannot grasp, then I don't see any particular reason to assume that can only happen once.
(If by Singularity we mean the point when superintelligent AI overtakes humans and drives us to extinction apart from those lucky/unlucky few who managed to get uploaded/absorbed... then perhaps that is a one-off event!)
Writing this in my quite short lunch break so haven't got time to elaborate, but there's a narrative in there about how the development of LLCs and capital markets - the point at which our huge, slow-moving, human-powered AIs really took on trans-human existence - was a (if not the) Singularity. There's also probably a short story about the Great Being Nestle at the end of time slowly ruminating on its passage across the stars.
1870 is also just about the date that large-scale extraction, refining, and transportation of petroleum became feasible. Harry Harrison's _Tunnel Through the Deeps_ notwithstanding it is hard to see how the world gets to the industrial economy of 1920 without the transportable high-density energy store of oil.
Commenting on a previous post I tried to argue that other economic hinges would have seemed just as transformational as 1870 to those who lived near them - whether for good or ill - and I was struggling to figure out whether it's tempting to think of 1870 as the biggest deal because it's closer. You've won me over that far - I'm still inclined to think that *all human history is hinge*, but you've convinced me that the acceleration of economic growth above the population level (a) happened in/around 1870 and (b) was a profound shift in the fundamentals of being human.
Still not down with it being the truest hing in human history, because while is may have been the hinge that made the most difference to the lived experience of the most people (so far), I can think of another axis for hinges which have been or may one day be equally transformational. That is, information sharing/mental alignment/the increasing complexity of communications by which we become the anthology intelligence that is humanity. Possible hinges: the invention of language, the printing press, the world wide web (near-instantaneous transmission of thought), in the direct brain-to-brain transfer (if that is ever more popular than the current near-instantaneous version of the web which at least allows for some illusion of individual control).
The question is thus whether the Singularity is in our past or in our future...
Why does it have to be one or the other? Or, why assume only one Singularity?
If the Singularity is the point beyond which we cannot see, because our assumptions and predictions about what is possible break down in the face of new technology, the implications for society of which we cannot grasp, then I don't see any particular reason to assume that can only happen once.
(If by Singularity we mean the point when superintelligent AI overtakes humans and drives us to extinction apart from those lucky/unlucky few who managed to get uploaded/absorbed... then perhaps that is a one-off event!)
Writing this in my quite short lunch break so haven't got time to elaborate, but there's a narrative in there about how the development of LLCs and capital markets - the point at which our huge, slow-moving, human-powered AIs really took on trans-human existence - was a (if not the) Singularity. There's also probably a short story about the Great Being Nestle at the end of time slowly ruminating on its passage across the stars.
Re #25 Is it the flummoxed-ness that seems to have put an end (?) to the extraordinary growth 1870-2010?
1870 is also just about the date that large-scale extraction, refining, and transportation of petroleum became feasible. Harry Harrison's _Tunnel Through the Deeps_ notwithstanding it is hard to see how the world gets to the industrial economy of 1920 without the transportable high-density energy store of oil.