Rainbows End and the Technological Singularity
// June 29th, 2006 // No Comments » // Security & Privacy, Technology
The Guardian has a review of Victor Venge’s Rainbows End. A book about:
…how developing technology and powerful interests could create a society far more invasive and controlled than anything Orwell dreamed of.
His research allowed him to draw reasonable technological extrapolitions for how things could be in 2025, the year the book is set.
From the Wikipedia entry on “Technological Singularity”, it represents…
…an “event horizon” in the predictability of human technological development past which present models of the future cease to give reliable or accurate answers, following the creation of strong artificial intelligence or the amplification of human intelligence. Futurists predict that after the Singularity, humans as they exist presently will cease to be the dominating force in scientific and technological progress, replaced with posthumans, strong AI, or both, and therefore all models of change based on past trends in human behavior will be obsolete.
Regardless of whether you support the plausibility of the books premise or think the Technological Singularity would be a good or bad thing, it’s a curious thought experiment to consider how people and culture might evolve, literally, in the landscape the author paints, and the implications for the concepts of privacy and freedom.
As the author said at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy (CFP) conference in Washington D.C last month:
“The illusion of freedom becomes a strange thing when a government is dealing with … thousands of people who are as bright as the smartest people running the government. Together, they outclass the people running the show. The turning point is the notion that to provide this illusion of freedom for such a group would wind up being more like real freedom than anything in human history.”
The book is available on Amazon.com here.
