Quoted from Box A Rox

Where Creationists have their way in a school district children are being taught that... the earth is around
4000 - 6000 years old.
That dinosaurs and man shared the earth at the same time, and that "evolution" is just a theory... not
established science accepted as true around the world... everywhere except in the backward parts
of the USA.

Quoted from Box A Rox

Where Creationists have their way in a school district children are being taught that... the earth is around
4000 - 6000 years old.
That dinosaurs and man shared the earth at the same time, and that "evolution" is just a theory... not
established science accepted as true around the world... everywhere except in the backward parts
of the USA.

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Technological singularity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The technological singularity is the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human superintelligence through technological means.[1] Since the capabilities of such intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which events cannot be predicted or understood.
Proponents of the singularity typically state that an "intelligence explosion",[2][3] where superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds, might occur very quickly and might not stop until the agent's cognitive abilities greatly surpass that of any human.
The term was popularized by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes of the singularity. The specific term "singularity" as a description for a phenomenon of technological acceleration causing an eventual unpredictable outcome in society was coined by mathematician and physicist Stanislaw Ulam as early as 1958, when he wrote of a conversation with John von Neumann concerning the "ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." The concept has also been popularized by futurists, such as Ray Kurzweil. Proponents expect the singularity to occur some time in the 21st century, although their estimates vary.

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History of the idea

In the middle of the 19th century Friedrich Engels wrote that science moves forward proportionally to the "mass of knowledge" inherited from the previous generations, he proposed a more formal mathematical concept that, since the 16th century, the development of the sciences had been increasing proportionally to the squared distance in time from its start.[citation needed]
In 1847, R. Thornton, the editor of The Expounder of Primitive Christianity,[27] wrote about the recent invention of a four function mechanical calculator:
...such machines, by which the scholar may, by turning a crank, grind out the solution of a problem without the fatigue of mental application, would by its introduction into schools, do incalculable injury. But who knows that such machines when brought to greater perfection, may not think of a plan to remedy all their own defects and then grind out ideas beyond the ken of mortal mind!
In 1951, Alan Turing spoke of machines outstripping humans intellectually:[28]
once the machine thinking method has started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. ... At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's 'Erewhon'.
In 1958, Stanisław Ulam wrote in reference[29] to a conversation with John von Neumann:
One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.
In 1965, I. J. Good first wrote of an "intelligence explosion", suggesting that if machines could even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways unforeseen by their designers, and thus recursively augment themselves into far greater intelligences. The first such improvements might be small, but as the machine became more intelligent it would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to a cascade of self-improvements and a sudden surge to superintelligence (or a singularity).
In 1983, mathematician and author Vernor Vinge greatly popularized Good’s notion of an intelligence explosion in a number of writings, first addressing the topic in print in the January 1983 issue of Omni magazine. In this op-ed piece, Vinge seems to have been the first to use the term "singularity" in a way that was specifically tied to the creation of intelligent machines,[30][31] writing:
We will soon create intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding. This singularity, I believe, already haunts a number of science-fiction writers. It makes realistic extrapolation to an interstellar future impossible. To write a story set more than a century hence, one needs a nuclear war in between ... so that the world remains intelligible.
In 1984, Samuel R. Delany used "cultural fugue" as a plot device in his science fiction novel Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand; the terminal runaway of technological and cultural complexity in effect destroys all life on any world on which it transpires, a process which is poorly understood by the novel's characters, and against which they seek a stable defense. In 1985 Ray Solomonoff introduced the notion of "infinity point"[32] in the time scale of artificial intelligence, analyzed the magnitude of the "future shock" that "we can expect from our AI expanded scientific community" and on social effects. Estimates were made "for when these milestones would occur, followed by some suggestions for the more effective utilization of the extremely rapid technological growth that is expected."
Vinge also popularized the concept in SF novels such as Marooned in Realtime (1986) and A Fire Upon the Deep (1992). The former is set in a world of rapidly accelerating change leading to the emergence of more and more sophisticated technologies separated by shorter and shorter time intervals, until a point beyond human comprehension is reached. The latter starts with an imaginative description of the evolution of a superintelligence passing through exponentially accelerating developmental stages ending in a transcendent, almost omnipotent power unfathomable by mere humans. It is also implied that the development does not stop at this level.
In his 1988 book Mind Children, computer scientist and futurist Hans Moravec generalizes Moore's law to make predictions about the future of artificial life. Moravec outlines a timeline and a scenario in this regard,[33][34] in that the robots will evolve into a new series of artificial species, starting around 2030-2040.[35] In Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, published in 1998, Moravec further considers the implications of evolving robot intelligence, generalizing Moore's law to technologies predating the integrated circuit, and speculating about a coming "mind fire" of rapidly expanding superintelligence, similar to Vinge's ideas.

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2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal
By LEV GROSSMAN Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011

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On Feb. 15, 1965, a diffident but self-possessed high school student named Raymond Kurzweil appeared as a guest on a game show called I've Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and the panelists — they included a comedian and a former Miss America — had to guess what it was.
On the show (see the clip on YouTube), the beauty queen did a good job of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200.
(Watch TIME's video "Singularity: How Scared Should We Be?")
Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself — a desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a typewriter. The panelists were pretty blasé about it; they were more impressed by Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. They were ready to move on to Mrs. Chester Loney of Rough and Ready, Calif., whose secret was that she'd been President Lyndon Johnson's first-grade teacher.
But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence.
That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it. Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that happens, humanity — our bodies, our minds, our civilization — will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this moment is not only inevitable but imminent. According to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.
(See the best inventions of 2010.)
Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing.
True? True.
So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.
If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.
(See the best inventions of 2010.)
Probably. It's impossible to predict the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with which (with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you'd be as smart as they would be. But there are a lot of theories about it. Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we'll scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.
The difficult thing to keep sight of when you're talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about the future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.
See pictures of cinema's most memorable robots.
From TIME's archives: "Can Machines Think?"
See TIME's special report on gadgets, then and now.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048299,00.html#ixzz24rBrFUl3

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Next Gen To Bring Singularity: Foresight Gifts Thousands of Singularity Related Books To Students

by David J. Hill August 28th, 2012 | Comments (0)
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To inspire a generation of tech entrepreneurs who can change the world, the Foresight Institute has come up with a simple but brilliant plan: give students an optimistic vision for the future. To do this, Foresight is launching a Youth Outreach pilot program that will send a set of books to the top 300 science and engineering college clubs, high school STEM educators, and youth programs for gifted students in the US. This will be followed up with an essay contest for students to write about the vision of the future presented in the books.
The set includes key texts in the singularity world, such as Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis and The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil, important books about the future of health like Ending Aging by Aubrey De Grey, works in nanotechnology, such as Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler, and other books with big ideas and bold visions of the future.
In contrast to the deluge of negative stories on the nightly news, imagine how even one of these texts could change the way students view the future, showing them the power technology to make our lives better?
To promote the project, Foresight released the following video:

In an interview with moonandback media, Desiree Dudley, Director of Development & Outreach, says about Foresight, “We as an organization think of ourselves at this point as a networking organization.” In that vein, the Youth Outreach program is a way to connect a generation of young students interested in technology with ideas from today’s thought leaders that are thinking deeply about trends that are shaping the future. In the promotional video for the project, author of 100 Plus Sonia Arrison said, “The way to change the world is to target young people when they’re just forming their ideas…and really getting those people on board with issues.”
Christine Peterson, who is co-founder of the Foresight Institute, describes the Institute’s motive in this new endeavor: “Our role here at Foresight is to look farther ahead and say, ‘How can we help steer these young people, these future geniuses and Noble prize winners of tomorrow, into the fields that really matter for our species [and] the environment, things like nanotechnology?’” Miguel Aznar, Director of Education at Foresight, added, “Who will be creating that nanotechnology? Well, many of them are still in school, and that’s why Foresight is sharing ideas from the visionaries of our time.” In fact, one of the works included in the set is Aznar’s own book called NanoScience Education, WorkForce Training, and K12 Resources that provides educators and school groups a roadmap for nanotechnology education.
The Institute is aiming to raise $30,000 in donations to make the project a success.

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Waiting for the Rapture
Technological convergence will change our lives but won't make them indenfinitely long
By GLENN ZORPETTE  /  JUNE 2008
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This is part of IEEE Spectrum's SPECIAL REPORT: THE SINGULARITY

Illustration: Bryan Christie Design
Across cultures, classes, and aeons, people have yearned to transcend death.
Bear that history in mind as you consider the creed of the singularitarians. Many of them fervently believe that in the next several decades we’ll have computers into which you’ll be able to upload your consciousness—the mysterious thing that makes you you. Then, with your consciousness able to go from mechanical body to mechanical body, or virtual paradise to virtual paradise, you’ll never need to face death, illness, bad food, or poor cellphone reception.
Now you know why the singularity has also been called the rapture of the geeks.
The singularity is supposed to begin shortly after engineers build the first computer with greater-than-human intelligence. That achievement will trigger a series of cycles in which superintelligent machines beget even smarter machine progeny, going from generation to generation in weeks or days rather than decades or years. The availability of all that cheap, mass-­produced brilliance will spark explosive economic growth, an unending, hypersonic, tech­no­industrial rampage that by comparison will make the Industrial Revolution look like a bingo game.
At that point, we will have been sucked well beyond the event horizon of the singularity. It might be nice there, on the other side—by definition, you can’t know for sure. Sci-fi writers, though, have served up lots of scenarios in which humankind becomes the prey, rather than the privileged beneficiaries, of synthetic savants.
But the singularity is much more than a sci-fi subgenre. A lot of smart people buy into it in one form or another—there are versions that dispense with the life-everlasting stuff. There are academic gatherings and an annual conference at Stanford. There are best-selling books, audiotapes, and videos. Scheduled for release this summer is a motion picture, The Singularity Is Near , starring the actress Pauley Perrette and a ­gaggle of aging boffins who’ve never acted in a movie. (Without any apparent irony, the picture’s producers call it ”a true story about the future.”)
There’s also a drumbeat of respectful and essentially credulous articles in the science press. Unlike stories about UFOs or zero-pollution energy sources, singularity stories don’t exact from editors a steep payment in self-respect. That’s because of the impressive attainments—albeit usually in fields unrelated to neuro­science or biology—of some of the people who chirp about mind uploading and nanomachine organ repair. The leading spokesman for the life-everlasting version of the singularity is the entrepreneur and inventor Ray Kurzweil, who’s also behind the movie The Singularity Is Near and a recent book of the same title.
Why should a mere journalist question Kurzweil’s conclusion that some of us alive today will live indefinitely? Because we all know it’s wrong. We can sense it in the gaping, take-my-word-for-it extrapolations and the specious reasoning of those who subscribe to this form of the singularity argument. Then, too, there’s the flawed grasp of neuroscience, human physiology, and philosophy. Most of all, we note the willingness of these people to predict fabulous technological advances in a period so conveniently short it offers themselves hope of life everlasting.
This has all gone on too long. The emperor isn’t wearing anything, for heaven’s sake.
The singularity debate is too rarely a real argument. There’s too much fixation on death avoidance. That’s a shame, because in the coming years, as ­computers become stupendously powerful—really and truly ridiculously powerful—and as electronics and other technologies begin to enhance and fuse with biology, life really is going to get more interesting.
So to produce this issue we invited articles from half a dozen people who impressed us with their achievements and writings on subjects central to the ­singularity idea in all its loopy glory, encompassing not just hardware and wetware but also economics, consciousness, robotics, nanotechnology, and philosophy. And with a few exceptions, we found people who are not on record as either embracing singularity dogma or rejecting it.