the singularity is here.

Positioning Ourselves
What is the Singularity?
When accelerating fundamental transformation

makes the future qualitatively different and

renders predictions unreliable.
“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.”
-Vernor Vinge, Omni (1983)

"I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030."

 Positioning Ourselves:
Pace of Change & Exponential Curves
-35,000 Cro Magnon 18
-4500 Ancient Egypt 25
1400 Europe 30
1800 Europe & U.S. 37
1900 U.S. 48
2011 U.S. 78

30 linear steps moves you 30 steps forward

30 exponential steps moves you 1 billion steps forward
 Earth
4,500,000,000
years ago
Positioning Ourselves
The Human Timescale
Taxonomy Name Common name ~Timeframe

Great apes (Humans, chimpanzees,

Family Hominidae
bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) 15,000,000 years ago

Humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and

Subfamily Homininae gorillas 8,000,000 years ago

Tribe Hominini Humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos 5,800,000 years ago

Bipedal apes (australopithecus and

Subtribe Hominina
descendants) 3,000,000 years ago

Humans, neanderthals, homo erectus, and

Genus Homo
their direct ancestors 2,500,000 years ago
Species Homo sapiens Humans 400,000 years ago
Sub-species Homo sapiens sapiens Modern humans 130,000 years ago
Movement I.
posture, cranial capacity, tools & social
learning
Movement I.
Homo Sapiens Sapiens at a Phylogenetic Crossing?
ca. -400,000: Homo Sapiens
The animal that knows

ca. -130,000: Homo Sapiens Sapiens

The animal that knows that they know

ca. 02100?: Homo Generator

The animal that creates artificial life

Is this a Phylogenetic move crossing a threshold

from homo sapiens sapiens to what is next?

Perhaps.
(Can we even know?)
 Movement I.
The Aporutopian Animal and The Universal Animal
The Aporutopian Animal is defined by the
aspiration for coherence and the gestures
of the body that narrate through
language, inscription and reenactment
conditioned by the accelerating
innovation of tools and the practices that
go with them at the apex of the hominin
exponential curve.
The Universal Animal is defined by the
aspiration for precision and the cultural
configurations that generate knowledge
through systems of measurement,
verification, self-correction and cross-
pollination that have a near auto-poietic
effect at the base of the next exponential
curve.
Movement II.
the fourth brain & the worlds to come
Movement II.
How should we then live?

1. Reclaiming
• Language
• Each Other
• The World

2. Invention of Divergence
• Innovation
• Inoperativity
Contact Me?

Dan Hughes
dan.hughes@singularityu.org

More:

“Gesture and Speech” -Andre Leroi-Gourhan

“Principles of Brain Evolution” -Georg Striedter
“The Crisis of the European Sciences” -Edmund Husserl
"First Word“ (Omni, January 1983) -Vernor Vinge
“The Singularity is Near” -Ray Kurzweil
“The Information” -James Gleick
“Life Itself” -Robert Rosen