I imagine every year that went by since like, I don't know, 1900, as just a countdown until the Singularity. I mean it all just went by so quickly that to most people those years don't matter for anything. I imagine a scenario of me time-travelling to the past, and just ending up staring at a clock in the year 1961, seeing time tick by. Tck tck, tck tck, tck tck, tck tck, with everything slowly progressing to that one fateful day as that clock ticks away. Even as early as the 1920s the world was progressing to the point of superintelligent technology taking over the world. Even in the days of the American Revolution that was a contributing factor. Even in medieval times, the times of the Roman Empire, and Neanderthals, all it meant was for those massive pieces of electronic wiring to one day be created and to run society. That one day, which I will estimate to be 2082 here, will have made all of those significant contributions to society completely meaningless.
It's already becoming meaningless too. You don't see anybody talking about history as the masterpiece that it is, especially not young people. I will admit I sound like a dad talking here, but no, I'm only 18 years old. And to be fair, I grew up in a family of progressive thinkers and people highly used to technology. I'm highly integrated with modern technology myself. But I spend a lot more time thinking about the past than I do the present, which I don't understand why everyone else around me doesn't. It doesn't make much sense to me. Learning about the past has always been so cool to me, yet it seems so meaningless to everyone else. And it's like as time goes on the past becomes even more meaningless than it was before. Yet my entire mindset revolves around the past.
No one else around me seems to share my love for the past. I will admit, progression in society is a good thing, technologically and socially. But that apparently means forgetting about everything that happened before and focusing only on new stuff and how to make stuff newer. Like, I don't get it. What am I missing? You're talking to a collector of antiques, including old video games and consoles, old books, old music records and tapes, and old films. I've become obsessed with past trends. I also think of what is now the present, the 2010s, and even the near future, such as the 2020s, to be the past. Well, I might as well right? It's gonna be the past pretty damn soon because time moves SO quickly. 2006 feels like yesterday. So it's not gonna be long before I'm missing 2017 just like how I miss 2013. Oh god, I REALLY MISS 2013!!! The 2010s is defined by the advent of convenient mobile technology that connects to the Internet, i.e. smartphones. I mean everyone has one of them. They're awesome. Just imagine, one day when I'm old I'm gonna be talking about this. The smartphone thing is one of the trends of my youth. Also, fidget spinners. That's gonna be a thing of the past one day just like pet rocks in the 1970s. I'm not saying that mobile technology will die out. Actually I think it's more likely that it'll stay, but it might be improved of course. It's just the fact that this decade is the advent of this technology that makes it so unique and important. So, yes, I do enjoy the present. I treat it in a similar manner to the past, though, just because I can imagine it being the past more than I can imagine it being the present.
Speaking of being old, one day (very soon!) everything that's new today will be classic by then. Think about 60 years ago today. 2017-60 = 1957. So we would be the 1957 to somebody. To me, and probably all of you too, since many of us will probably be alive in 2077. So all this crap, Super Mario Odyssey, the Nintendo Switch, Frozen, Snapchat, Facebook, and all that stuff that's popular now will one day not be popular anymore. And even if, say, Facebook, is still being used, it will look very different than it does today. So watching Zootopia or Boss Baby in 2077 would be like watching an old Bugs Bunny film or something now. I barely can stand thinking of the day when all the hardcore online gamers of today are almost 80 years old, older, or dead. It's almost creepy to even imagine. Most people I know today who are that old won't even touch a video game controller, or touch a keyboard. That huge transition between the generations is almost scary.
So anyway, I started this off with notes about the Singularity, so let's get to the point. The Singularity refers to the technological Singularity, a predicted future event in which society changes faster than humans can possibly anticipate or keep up with due to AI becoming superintelligent and increasing their intelligence levels rapidly. The ASIs (artificial superintelligences) will become so intelligent that they far exceed any human intelligence, kind of like how our intelligence far exceeds that of a common housefly. Really, it'd probably be much more even than that. So basically, these are machines that can not only do everything we can do, and I do mean everything, but they can do all these things exponentially better. This idea existed before Kurzweil (since it really started with the whole idea of "robots taking over humanity", an idea which has existed since at least the 1950s), but Ray Kurzweil was the one who really popularized the idea of the so-called "Singularity" in the 2000s. Since then, he's received quite a cult following indeed. A lot of discussion, debate, criticism, and of course a fanbase has been created by Kurzweil's take on the idea.
I believe that a Singularity will occur by around the 2080s or 2090s. I don't think artificial intelligence will have the capability to become superintelligent by the 2040s. It'd be a huge stretch. It's possible, but remember that in the 1970s-80s many people were saying the same thing about today, and AI hasn't gone much of anywhere since then (not to that comparison level anyway). The 2040s will see some advancements, but I think it will still be a largely internet-driven human-ruled society just like today. 40s just seems too soon, so doubling that would make more sense.
But, at whatever time it occurs, I still think it'll occur during my lifetime. This is actually pretty scary to me. You see people don't care about history now, in this progressive society. Well, I have a hard time believing that ASI will want anything to do with the subject, if the ASI is like how some people present the idea to me. Usually the people who talk about this stuff are especially futuristic thinkers. And the people who design these monstrosities will more than likely be technology and coding nerds. So, it would only make sense that the ASIs would at least in some way reflect their developers or the general population, right?
So then that begs me to ask the question of; would there be any ASIs that would actually be compatible with my interests? I've heard from some people that superintelligent agents would have differential psychologies like humans, in fact they'd be even more differential than humans since they're a lot more advanced. This is the society that I would actually enjoy living in; a society where I could be linked up to an ASI that actually fits my personal needs and interests.
There's no reason to say that Ghostbusters is gonna die because the Singularity would knock it out of importance completely...right? I mean surely I could still explore various aspects of the past with an ASI. I could watch all kinds of very good movies with them, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Rocky, Friday the 13th, Home Alone, The Crucible, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Wizard of Oz, and many more that I forgot to mention. Oh, and remember the 1937 Fox vault fire? I didn't think so. Anyway, that was a fire that destroyed a lot of silent films and such from the 1900s to the 1930s. Perhaps an ASI could run a program to regenerate all of human history in a simulation just to regenerate copies of those lost films.
Speaking of regenerating human histories in a simulation, think about all that that could accomplish. I could time travel, man! Seriously, that's the closest thing you'd get to safe time travel to the past. I've always dreamed of being able to time travel, and have been planning for it in case it ever gets to happen to me. I could go to any time I wanted, any place I wanted, and do whatever I wanted.
What about video games? Did I mention the Atari 2600? There was also the 5200 and the 7800, but that's off-topic. That was the first video game console that ever got to be extremely popular. And that thing was popular in the 1970s. The decade when my grandparents were in college. That's pretty amazing to me. Imagine an ASI that would play classic NES games or classic Atari 2600 games with you, like Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Space Invaders, Pong, and other revolutionary games like these. Though I will admit there is a large amount of retrogamers like me out there, the amount of people who only retrogame seem to be very few. I mean it's just more efficient anyway to buy older consoles and games because they're cheaper because they're old. I mean heck even the Wii is old now. That thing came out when I was like 6 years old. It was like magic to me. Magic. The awesome 3-D graphics, awesome game library, and best of all, the controllers. The sensors might've been pieces of crap sometimes but at least it was better than the Powerglove for the NES.
Does anybody remember Duckman? That hilarious show from the 1990s that never got enough attention? Again, I didn't think so. This animated series was just remarkable. It was the predecessor to other potty-mouthed creative shows with complex writing like South Park, Futurama, and Rick and Morty, which I also am a big fan of. But Duckman. You couldn't replace this dark humor style with anything. It is unique in its own special way. I've watched the whole series over like 10 times through and it never gets old. It's hard for something funny to be funny more than 10 times through in the same 2 years. Definitely a personal favorite. Yet, it's forgotten. Ask just about anyone about Duckman, and they'll have no idea what it is. You show them the show, and they're guaranteed to love it. This is a series that was so good that no one has ever dared to remake it or make a sequel/prequel since, fearing it would be worse than the original.
Anyway, I went off on a tangent. That's one show that was good. Other unforgettable ones include Woody Woodpecker, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, South Park (yes I did say that because one day it'll be old), Futurama, Naruto, Sonic X, Kirby: Right Back At Ya!, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (and all 2 of its sequel series), Mona the Vampire, My Little Pony:
Friendship is Magic!, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (PEOPLE SERIOUSLY FORGOT ABOUT THIS MASTERPIECE RIGHT HERE!), Beyblade, Fairy Tail, Black Butler, Bleach, Eek! the Cat, Popeye, Camp Lazlo, omg I'm so sorry I'm spamming a list here but seriously these classic shows are not ones I'll ever forget. And there are probably more I didn't mention.
Anyway, so ASI better not forget about all this stuff. It's important too. I have the unfortunate nightmare often that everything I was ever interested in will suddenly disappear from existence in the future. It's sort of a paranoia that the old may literally be replaced by the new one day with no further access to the old. I really hope that one day I live in a Singularity world where the past is appreciated just as much as if not more than the present and the future, rather than a backward society where only one part of the time spectrum is appreciated. You might be wondering what the point of this post was... Yeah really what was the point of it? Just to share how I feel about this stuff I guess. I don't know. I guess it's just to help get across the creative perspective of the Singularity being used to help learn about and explore the past. Perhaps an AI like this could be called a "nostalgia machine", a machine interested in helping nostalgic people be more nostalgic. Anyway, have a Happy New Year everyone, and remember to appreciate the interesting year of 2018 for as long as it lasts, just like you hopefully did with 2017!
