“It seems plausible that with technology we can, in the fairly near future, create (or become) creatures who surpass humans in every intellectual and creative dimension. Events beyond this event—call it the Technological Singularity—are as unimaginable to us as opera is to a flatworm.”

This issue will be the biggest thing that will happen this century and it makes global warming look like a storm in a teacup. With the development of the singularity will come nanotechnology and the potential power to who ever develops it first will be unthinkable. If a small selfish group of people develop it first they would have more potential power then every nation on earth put together. They could hold the world to ransom and enslave the entire populous of the world.

“Pessimists say that just a few humans or computers will acquire such intelligence first, and then use it to subjugate the rest of us Homo sapiens.”

The human era is almost over and with in 100 years there will be two distinct groups, homo sapiens and superhumans who’s intelligence will be unfathomable too us today. This will have wide reaching ramifications for the entire race. Deeply devout religious people will probably refuse to have anything to do with these advancements while the rest of us who choose too become superhuman will look at those people in the same way as people today look at apes.

“If that happens, the gap between Homo sapiens and super-intelligence could quickly become as wide as the gap between apes and Homo sapiens.”

What are peoples thoughts on this coming event?

Hmmmm. Yeh sure...if God allows it.
Many cut God and His Will out of the equation yet hundreds of millions of born again christians will tell you that the Holy Bibles endtimes are so close they are almost rubbing against us.
The approach of the endtimes are the confirmation of The Holy Spirit living inside the christian believer. Luke chapter 21 is an insight so is Revelation.

Well my first thought is that it's a load of codswallop. Then my second thought is... well, to be frank, my second thought was actually the same as my first thought, but with some mild swearing.

Interesting though, that this post has attracted OLO's nuttiest Christian. Fear of technology is the new imminent apocalypse. Some scholars speculate that every generation since 1000AD has believed the world will end in their lifetime.

Technology has driven man forward since he first used a rock to kill a woolly mammoth. As James Lovelock says, it's the only thing that can save us now. Ludicrous, archaic and religious objections to new technologies like stem cell research just hold back human endeavour.

On the other hand, if it does happen, remember I'm on your side, Mr Computer. Death to humanoids!

Easytimes; cut it out you are giving me the willies.

Gibs; " " " " " " " " " .

Easy Times, I suppose it's all feasible, as long as we don't blow each other up first.
In Scotland, scientists have developed a prosthetic arm that functions almost as well as an original. Also they are working on a rudimentary bionic eye. As these and other developments progress, we may be able to replace our body parts with 'upgrades'. Add the prospect of human cloning and the sky's the limit.
We may be able to engineer our own evolution, no matter what the holy god-botherers think.
Personally, I'd rather keep my original parts, no matter how inferior they be to turbo-charged upgrades.
If this all comes to pass, it would be like you wrote. There would be two sub-species. Normal humans and those who wanted (and could afford) upgrading.

“Well my first thought is that it's a load of codswallop. Then my second thought is... well, to be frank, my second thought was actually the same as my first thought, but with some mild swearing.” Wow thanks for that vanilla the only thing you have contributed is your ignorance. How did you come to this page? I think you are looking for this site www.theflufflylittlerabbit.com or even www.dancinghamsters.com now they are sites more inline with your intellectual capability!

Its obvious that few people have a grasp of this very serious issue because it has not been played out in the media. I don’t even have a grasp on the entire subject but a lot of very smart futurist and philosophers are generally worried about the potential out comes of this event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

In my own words the singularity will be a point in about 20-50 years time in which computers will surpass humans in intelligence. This will result in the phenomena of the last invention that humans ever make. After that all technological progress will be made by computers and software.

The reasons why we should be worried is because there will be no humans intellectually capable of understanding what the computers are doing. It would be like Einstein explaining in great depth his theories of universe to a 5 year old and expecting the 5 year old to fully understand.

“The Singularity" is a phrase borrowed from the astrophysics of black holes. The phrase has varied meanings; as used by Vernor Vinge and Raymond Kurzweil, it refers to the idea that accelerating technology will lead to superhuman machine intelligence that will soon exceed human intelligence, probably by the year 2030. The results on the other side of the "event horizon," they say, are unpredictable.”

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kurzweil_singularity/kurzweil_singularity_index.html