Culturologist Oksana Moroz about the intensity of technological developments, complicating the digital environment and the transformation of our lives in an era of change.
About singularity
The concept of "singularity" can be decrypted in the socio-humanitarian knowledge a variety of images. I like the kind of understanding that provides a well-known philosopher-poststructuralist Gilles Deleuze. He said that the singularity - it is an event which, however, can be a little stretched in time, which combines a variety of possibilities, functional, engineering, technology and some social dimensions to generate something new. In this sense, the singularity - it is an event-fold, where there are some amazing collaborations, amazing combinations that give rise to what was unimaginable yesterday. And in this sense, when we talk about a technological singularity, of course we are talking about some such event-fold, which is formed within the digital revolution. The digital revolution has been developing since the invention of the transistor and is still ongoing.
Kurzweil’s opinion
In terms of view of conceptualization of the concept of "technological singularity", of course, the main figure that is mentioned most often, is Raymond Kurzweil, a lot of working as a Google engineer and as head of engineering directions in Google and at the same time, which is so representative of the pop science of a new generation. He lectures, writes books about what a hypothetical digital singularity. In its simplest form, his understanding of this phenomenon is as follows: when any technological progress will reach such level of development will be so fast that humanity will forget how to understand it, forget how to control it, and in this sense ceases to occupy a dominant position in the relationship with the machine and equipment.
Kurzweil believes this will happen in this century. He occasionally moves a certain temporal moment, when singularity happens. But as it actively oversees the inventions and different research practices in the field of artificial intelligence, in the field of robotics, in the field of biotechnology, he predicts that this will happen pretty soon. From his point of view, of course, one of the most important elements and precursors of this event, the technological singularity is the emergence of strong artificial intelligence, whose thinking abilities, prioritizing tasks, resolving tasks, performing certain functions analogous to the human capabilities, like them, to copy or even exceed them. And this, of course, is due to the fact that he is actively not just watching, but also promotes studies of the human brain, indicates, in which direction to go work on the brain emulations and etc.
Discrepancies
And here, of course, there are many critical remarks in his address. They, too, can be examined in two paradigms: strong and weak comments. Many of them, incidentally, generate not only the theorists who specialize in socio-humanitarian knowledge, but also from practical engineers. One type of contradictions that they notice is a logical contradiction. Yes, we know that human progress moves an exponential way. Yes, we know that the period between the emergence of different fatal and changes gradually become more and more short. Yes, we understand that the modern changes and modern inventions in the field digital, everything connected with artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, the emergence of neural interfaces, smart environments, including the Internet of everything, crypto-currencies and so forth are inventions that were not new, but today they are the most well-known even at the level of some popular sayings. This allows you to say that tomorrow will not be the same today. The only question is how we define tomorrow, and when it starts — ten years, really tomorrow or in a century.
Nevertheless, even this attentive tracking of scientific progress, if we see it as linear, that is, from stick-diggers to wheel and onto some other inventions, are not suggesting that is the most studied today, is really on the cutting edge, on the frontier of some of the pioneering discoveries of tomorrow. It is obvious that, for example, the same neural interfaces are used as in the recreational industry, in computer games, and in medicine, and this suggests that time at least two of the industry — and actually more — interact with this technology, it will live. But nevertheless a hundred percent we can't predict in what form it will exist. And what's important, we can't predict how people will use it. That is, to a certain extent, we always know what invention that appeared and was represented by scientists and engineers can use the most unusual ways. And the metaphor of hunting squirrel with a howitzer will be relevant to any invention, no matter digital or not. It turns out that Kurzweil's forecast in some sense hypothetical level of futurology. He does not hesitate of this word and calls himself a futurist.
The second point is much more serious and more technical, technologized within itself, its contents, this observation is due to the fact that none of the modern surveillance and research practice on the understanding of the human brain, cognitive processes did not reach the level that can become the basis for the creation of artificial intelligence, strong anthropomorphic quality. So, we have quite a large number of machines that beat a grandmaster in chess, we have a neural network that paint pictures and write music, but until we have the engine for all these situations, the programmer, that is the human. In this sense, machine-machine interaction certainly exists, but it is not intuitive, independent, and man there is always a link. And even some experiments on the emulation of the mouse brain or the rat still didn't meant that humanity figured out how to invent a machine which can think like a mouse or a rat. In this sense, the story of technological singularity, which is based, of course, on the notion of strong artificial intelligence, stands as a symbol of faith.
Cyberpunk is coming
There are technocrats and technocentrism who believe that it will bring future work in different areas (by the way, it's not only programmers, but very often designers, people who work in the field of economics, in the field of organizational culture). But there are skeptics who say that the digital revolution exists, we live in a situation post-digital when we are not just digitized some practice, and when we are all digital, but it cannot be discounted that there is a digital divide, there are people who are thrown out of the digital environment in which it is not, that is, they are excluded from that space. They also say that to a very large extent the whole concept is so technocentric that if you don't have the proper knowledge in mathematics, physics processes, in programming, you quite difficult to understand how it really works. But if you can't understand how it works, you still find yourself potentially in a situation of a man who hunting squirrel with a howitzer.
Therefore, it seems more important to speak about digital singularity as a metaphor that describes just some of the social, cultural, economic, political reality of the human living next to specific devices, which ensure the existence of digital services. A human who lives in terms of computational systems that are integrated with each other and allows you to perform actions that previously were impossible to do. A human who lives surrounded by other people, their actions guided by the logic of online interactions, internet interactions than logic offline presence. And it is very important to say that digital singularity consists of several components. And it is the future that is already here. That is, all these things will develop further. All of these services, all these opportunities will develop further. And we can more or less predict the specificity of their development. And from them we will not soon give up.
What kind of levels of digital singularity? Of course, this level of availability of data and algorithms. That is, the digital environment is a mathematical reality and physical reality, that we're not going anywhere. Even if we are talking about cloud computing or the "Internet of things" that evolve to the "Internet of everything", it's like computing systems, in accordance with certain logical, mathematical laws. This is the reality that will be with us, even if we imagine some kind of technological Apocalypse with robots, exciting Universe. In addition, this is the reality of the actual devices that are experiencing a pretty serious evolution. Since when did personal computers (this point is still closer to us than the invention of the transistor), to the modern period, the device underwent a grand transformation and resulted in a grand transformation of user practices, that is practices of human interaction with things. If earlier it seemed to us that we will work with a desktop computer, then we used to wearable computers, then it turned into a wearable mobile device. And now we have a wearable Internet, when everything we used to, when all practices of interaction with any devices, any services, all our social and cultural challenges we solve by pressing the two buttons that we are successful and productive.
And third, a very important level — is the level of infrastructure, which is decomposed into individual practice and collective practice. Changing human habits, we begin to pay more attention to how much time and how we spend in the Network, we begin to understand that the Internet is multi-layered and that the world wide web is only one of the distributed networks that there are other possibilities. We start to follow any kind of ideological practices in the field of the Internet. We begin to think about the fact that, for example, gives some logic pirate internationals for the development of the Internet, how it affects our ability to communicate with content downloading and distribution of content and so on. We begin to think about how our everyday life is becoming easier by the fact that all is digitalized, and begin to choose digital, a digital culture of comfort when you have to press a few buttons instead of taking a few steps, and it becomes the norm.
Moreover, since the tasks of modern countries and modern business includes the expansion of the Internet and possible access to it, then fewer people be thrown out of this digital reality. And this digital divide disappearing in the past from technological point of view. This collective implication, organizational, is how industry in the broad sense of the word that is associated with the production and cultural industries, working with network capabilities — from how organized the business and come the practice of remote management, up to the way it influences specific processes, for example, in the production of digital reality, digital products.
Resume
All this things together — this is the context in which we exist. And if in relation to the technological singularity is very difficult to develop a critical attitude, reflection, because it is not that close to us, and not what happens to us in reality, in relation to the situation of the digital singularity is very important to develop proper reflection. It is very important to understand that every time we push the button of the device, opening a chat to someone to talk to, call a taxi, order food, find a doctor or choose the online training program, we committed an act which in fact affects the future of tomorrow.
ссылка(и) на источник(и): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm9dwI2o_Fk
Translated: Valery Gorlanov