Microsoft Word Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity Is Near doc

 So tell me again about these ideas you have about the future. 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
,
2
B
ILLION 
B.C.:
 Well, I see bacteria getting together into societies, with the whole band of cells 
basically acting like one big complicated organism with greatly enhanced capabilities. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 What gives you that idea? 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Well already, some of our fellow Daptobacters have gone inside other larger bacteria to form 
a little duo.
221
 It's inevitable that our fellow cells will band together so that each cell can specialize its function. 
As it is now, we each have to do everything by ourselves: find food, digest it, excrete by-products. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 And then what? 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 All these cells will develop ways of communicating with one another that go beyond just the 
swapping of chemical gradients that you and I can do. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Okay, now tell me again the part about that future superassembly of ten trillion 
cells. 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Yes, well, according to my models, in about two billion years a big society of ten trillion cells 
will make up a single organism and include tens of billions of special cells that can communicate with one 
another in very complicated patterns. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 What sort of patterns? 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Well, "music," for one thing. These huge bands of cells will create musical patterns and 
communicate them to all the other bands of cells. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Music? 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Yes, patterns of sound. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Sound? 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Okay, look at it this way. These supercell societies will be complicated enough to understand 
their own organization. They will be able to improve their own design, getting better and better, faster and 
faster. They will reshape the rest of the world in their image. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Now, wait a second. Sounds like we'll lose our basic bacteriumity. 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Oh, but there will be no loss. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 I know you keep saying that, but ... 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 It will be a great step forward. It's our destiny as bacteria. And, anyway, there will still be little 
bacteria like us floating around. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Okay, but what about the downside? I mean, how much harm can our fellow 
Daptobacter and Bdellovibrio bacteria do? But these future cell associations with their vast reach may destroy 
everything. 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 It's not certain, but I think we'll make it through. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 You always were an optimist. 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Look, we won't have to worry about the downside for a couple billion years. 
F
RIEND OF 
F
UTURIST 
B
ACTERIUM
:
 Okay, then, let's get lunch. 
MEANWHILE, TWO BILLION YEARS LATER . . . 
N
ED 
L
UDD
:
 
These future intelligences will be worse than the textile machines I fought back in 1812. Back then we had 
to worry about only one man with a machine doing the work of twelve. But you're talking about a marble-size 
machine outperforming all of humanity. 
R
AY
:
 
It will only outperform the biological part of humanity. In any event, that marble is still human, even if not 
biological. 

---

N
ED
:
 These superintelligences won't eat food. They won't breathe air. They won't reproduce through sex....So just how 
are they human? 
R
AY
:
 
We're going to merge with our technology. We're already starting to do that in 2004, even if most of the 
machines are not yet inside our bodies and brains. Our machines nonetheless extend the reach of our 
intelligence. Extending our reach has always been the nature of being human. 
N
ED
:
 Look, saying that these superintelligent nonbiological entities are human is like saying that we're basically 
bacteria. After all, we're evolved from them also. 
R
AY
:
 
It's true that a contemporary human is a collection of cells, and that we are a product of evolution, indeed its 
cutting edge. But extending our intelligence by reverse engineering it, modeling it, simulating it, reinstantiating 
it on more capable substrates, and modifying and extending it is the next step in its evolution. It was the fate of 
bacteria to evolve into a technology-creating species. And it's our destiny now to evolve into the vast 
intelligence of the Singularity. 

---

C H A P T E R S I X
The Impact . . . 
The future enters into us in order to transform itself in us long before it happens. 
—R
AINER 
M
ARIA 
R
ILKE
One of the biggest flaws in the common conception of the future is that the future is something that happens 
to us, not something we create. 
—M
ICHAEL 
A
NISSIMOV
"Playing God" is actually the highest expression of human nature. The urges to improve ourselves, to master 
our environment, and to set our children on the best path possible have been the fundamental driving forces of 
all of human history. Without these urges to "play God," the world as we know it wouldn't exist today. A few 
million humans would live in savannahs and forests, eeking out a hunter-gatherer existence, without writing 
or history or mathematics or an appreciation of the intricacies of their own universe and their own inner 
workings. 
—R
AMEZ 
N
AAM