Current Futurist Thought

The crucial concept of Technological Singularity developed by Vernor Vinge

Singularity Is More Radical Than We Think. My own text showing that implications of the technological singularity are still quite underestimated. These implications are analyzed here from the viewpoint of physics and ethics.


Here are some sites, where people are really thinking innovatively and realistically about the future dynamics of our civilization, artificial intelligence, nature and future of humans.

There is no shortage of people, who say that they are working on some of these issues. There is no shortage of published texts. It is very difficult to identify the small minority, who really contribute. Links here should be of some help to locate some of them.

Extropy Institute

World Transhumanist Association

Transhumanist Resources

Marvin Minsky Home Page

Douglas Hofstadter Home Page

Continuous process of uploading (versus "instant" uploading) seems to be one of the main keys for "immortality" (meaning an unlimited continuous process of progressive identity transformation as opposed to current dynamics, which is limited in time and largely regressive in the later stages of life) and in handling the singularity issues (a singularity would not be a singularity for an identity, whose rate of progressive transformation is sufficiently fast). One of the nice papers on the matter is Gradual Uploading as a Condition of Mind by Algimantas Malickas.

Beyond wearables: some people start experimenting with chip implants --- the first real step to continuous uploading. And even more radical games with chip implants.

Thanks to Sasha Chislenko for showing me that this kind of research can be of truly high quality.


Last updated: Nov 2002. Last link cleanup: Apr 2005.
Back to Mishka's home page