Brent Kearney

The Singularity Summit brings together futurist luminaries to discuss the rapidly approaching technological singularity: that point past which it becomes nearly impossible to estimate the course of human technological — and biological — development.

I highly recommend that you check out the videos from the summit. Especially the man with the crystal ball, the highlight of the conference, Ray Kurzweil. Despite his monotone, sleep-inducing style of speaking, Kurzweil’s talk is fascinating. He sums up what many of the other speakers said in their talks, comments on them, and gives an overview of the inexorable march of technological progress towards the singularity.

The debate between Ray Kurzweil and John Horgan was interesting. It was refreshing to hear an opposing view, even though his argument from complexity was rather weak in the face of exponentially growing knowledge and computational power, and Horgan had nothing to say about Kurzweil’s suggestion that the brain’s complexity is like a fractal — not as complex as it appears. In the end, it came down to a factual dispute: Horgan does not believe that biology/neurology is or is the same as information technology, and Kurzweil does.

It’s a valid objection. Many technophiles hold the view that genetics and/or brain-mind and/or nano-physics is similar or the same as binary, digital computer technology. What if this view is false? Could the information bits that are perceived in living cells turn out to be a misconception of what is going on inside the body? Is wetware an irreducible, fundamental component of brains, intelligence, consciousness? Of genetic goings-on in general?

Philosophers have long speculated that this could be so. It seems to me though, that the engineers have already won that debate. An example that nicely illustrates how fundamental biological processes are essentially a natural implementation of information technology is Paul Rothemund’s presentation, Casting spells with DNA, or the more recent version, DNA folding. Rothemund describes the beginnings of a high-level computer programming language for engineering DNA, resulting in the manipulation of biological mechanisms to precisely control the organization of matter at the molecular or atomic level. If the understanding of DNA as an information substrate was mistaken, this would not be possible.

Consciousness is another matter — as Horgan pointed out, we don’t even understand irony. First things first though. A lot will be discovered on the path to engineering a brain. Maybe the mystery of consciousness will be solved along the way. Maybe it will be an emergent property of a sufficiently complex neural system. We’ll find out when we get there!

See also: Singularity Hub’s first-hand review of the summit

It was a beautiful October evening in Banff, and I was home early — as I often am on Mondays — looking forward to getting out for a run before the sun set. Things were busy at work and at home, I had a lot on my mind, including ramping up training for the cross country ski season, and for my next adventure race in the early summer. I was feeling good, and started off with a strong pace towards the Sundance Canyon, just down the hill from my place.

I enjoy that route in the evenings, because the trail runs east-west, providing spectacular scenery at dusk, when the skies turn purple, yellow, pink and sometimes even shades of green. Given the time that I was leaving for my run, I would have been treated to this during my return from the canyon, if it weren’t for one of my neighbours, her little dog, and an old dead tree.

I had just picked up speed, running down-hill on the trail from my house, when I spotted the little dog, connected to it’s owners by one of those ever-expanding retractable leashes. The dog was one of those hyper, yappy little dogs. It had spotted me running in their direction, and was going wild, running towards me. I looked at it’s owners, a mother-daughter pair, who saw me coming as well. I was approaching a bend in the trail where I turn off, onto a less traveled path through the woods. I picked up speed, figuring that I would make it to the turn-off before the dog did, and/or the leash-holder would do the sensible thing and pull the crazed animal back. I was wrong on both measures.

There are a lot of wind storms here in the mountains, and as a result, fallen trees are very common. I don’t think twice about jumping over them while running, or bunny-hopping them on my mountain bike. So I was habitually unconcerned that there was a fallen tree crossing my path. It just so happened that at the exact moment my feet left the ground, as I hopped over the tree, the hyper little dog made a last-moment lunge for me. I cleared the dog, but not it’s leash, which snagged my foot, tripping me onto the downed tree. Which was covered in branches…