Is social media leading us toward a Technological Singularity?

I’m not a big documentary movie watcher but I recently found Transcendent Man, a documentary about future thinker and inventor Ray Kurzweil, on Netflix and couldn’t stop watching it.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Kurzweil or his idea of ‘The Singularity,’ that’s basically the time when human life becomes intertwined with machines (check out the Technological Singularity entry on Wikipedia). Kurzweil suggests that within a couple decades we’ll have man-made, electronic parts embedded within our bodies.

I know that’s already a reality, but the type of technological parts Kurzweil’s talking about would fundamentally change mortal humans to immortals.

The question is raised in the documentary: “When do we cross the line from being human to being a robot?”

Good question!

To augment human brain power may be beneficial. But where do you stop?

If you buy-in to The Singularity, is it something to be longed for or protected against?

One idea suggested in the film is that a world war will occur between two schools of thought: those who want to become part machine and those who believe the best approach is to stay as far away from it as possible. That war wouldn’t necessarily involve nations, but individuals belonging to two polar-opposite groups.

As I heard Kurzweil talk about a future where microscopic robots roam our bloodstream to make us immortal and digital chips implanted in our brains send our thoughts out to others like we now use email, Facebook and Twitter, I couldn’t help but wonder if the social media tools we see today will play a role in human robots of the future.

Yes, it sounds crazy, I know. But think about the utility of it: instead of typing on a keyboard, you could think, “I need to send an email to so-and-so,” then summon your built-in Internet connection, compose a message in your mind and fire it away to be received by the digital chip in the mind of the recipient.

And if you wanted it to be public, like a Twitter feed, you could just mark the mental message as public and it would appear on some virtual billboard of everyone’s thoughts. Sounds a lot like Twitter doesn’t it?

Think of how smart you’d be if you could Google anything in your mind. Academia would find it very difficult to prevent cheating.

While I value the advancements science and technology have made to preserve human life and enhance life expectancy, I find little value in turning this life’s temporary experience into a forever experience.

Kurzweil fears death and is obviously still deeply affected by his father’s death. I think he lacks belief in any kind of an afterlife. He has a whole storage unit full of his father’s memorabilia so he can build an electronic entity that will include all his dad’s thoughts and memories.

I’m a fan of living this life to the fullest, then moving on to the next step in our progression. To me death is just the end of this chapter and the beginning of a very exciting next chapter.

Your thoughts?

What do you think about Transcendent Man? Have you seen it?

Do you think a social media type of technology will eventually be implanted inside newborn humans so they can communicate with the world?

Seems far-fetched to me. And sad.

I like my imperfect, mortal existence. And I like being unplugged and offline every now and then.