The Singularity is Nonsense Technological Singularity It's come to my attention that some futurists are still referring to future rapid developments in technology as a "singularity" or a "technological singularity". History Use of the term "the singularity" in this context appears to have originated with the science fiction writer, Vernor Vinge, in 1993. See here for details. Vinge describes the singularity as follows: It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules. - http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html Problems The problem with using the term "the singularity" is that the phenomena in question doesn't look very singular. We are certainly in the middle of a period of exponential growth - and the rate of progress shows little sign of slowing its rate of increase. However, exponential curves simply don't have "singular" points on them. Look at an exponential curve at any point, and it appears self-similar - no part of it is much different from any other point. The idea of a singularity seems to suggest a sort of super-exponential growth. This diagram - from Ray Kurzweil - illustrates the idea:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/images/chart01.jpg ...or at least it would do - if it were not purporting to measuring the "mass use of inventions" in millimeters. The suggestion seems to be that growth will get faster and faster - asymptotically approaching infinity at some particular future point in time. If that was ever to happen, the term "singularity" would be certainly be quite appropriate. However, the idea is a ridiculous one. On closer examination, practically no futurists actually support it. Instead they typically claim that the term "singularity" has different inspirations: In futures studies, a technological singularity represents a hypothetical "event horizon" in the predictability of human technological development. Past this event horizon, following the creation of strong artificial intelligence or the amplification of human intelligence, existing models of the future cease to give reliable or accurate answers.

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Vinge's singularity is commonly misunderstood to mean technological progress will rise to infinity, as happens in a mathematical singularity. Actually, the term was chosen as a metaphor from physics rather than mathematics: as one approaches the Singularity, models of the future become less reliable, just as conventional models of physics break down as one approaches a gravitational singularity. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity [...] just as our model of physics breaks down when it tries to model the singularity at the center of a black hole, our model of the world breaks down when it tries to model a future that contains entities smarter than human. - http://www.singinst.org/overview/whatisthesingularity I note that these descriptions can't seem to make up their mind whether they are talking about an event horizon, that cannot be seen beyond, or a singularity where things break down. Unfortunately, Vinge never defined his terminology - resulting in multiple interpretations. Nick Bostrom has noted: "The singularity" has been taken to mean different things by different authors, and sometimes by the same author on different occasions. There are at least three clearly distinct theoretical entities that might be refered to by this term: A point in time at which the speed of technological development becomes extremely great. (Verticality)

The creation of superhuman artificial intelligence. (Superintelligence)

A point in time beyond which we can predict nothing, except maybe what we can deduce directly from physics. (Unpredictability, aka "prediction horizon") - Nick Bostrom Using the term "singularity" looks to me like an appalling mistake, however you look at it. The connotations of either something becoming infinite, or only happening once - are far too strong. The term immediately conjours up an innacurate and misleading impression. As for the claims that the ability to predict the future is limited - that is caused by a well-known phenomenon known as chaos. Small uncertainties in initial conditions become magnified as time passes into large uncertainties in the outcome. The phenomenon applies on a large range of timescales: some things are unpredictable over a few seconds - others are highly predictable over billions of years. The breakdown of prediction does not happen at a particular point in the future - rather different phenomena are predictable on different timescales. Our ability to predict the future of human evolution in much detail may well be limited - as predicted events become increasingly uncertain the further into the future projections are made. However, that has always been the case - and no doubt it will always be the case. There will always be difficulties in looking very far into the future - since some elements of what will happen are contingent on chance events. The shape of things to come