The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order.

When the first transhuman intelligence is created and launches itself into recursive self-improvement, a fundamental discontinuity is likely to occur, the likes of which I can’t even begin to predict.

PBS selected him as one of “sixteen revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries

From a linear perspective, most key events have just happened “recently.”

To compare the rate of progress of the biological evolution of intelligence to that of technological evolution, consider that the most advanced mammals have added about one cubic inch of brain matter every hundred thousand years, whereas we are roughly doubling the computational capacity of computers every year (see the next chapter).

Combining the endowment of rational and abstract thought with our opposable thumb, our species ushered in the fourth epoch and the next level of indirection: the evolution of human-created technology.

We have the ability to redesign the world in our own minds and to put these ideas into action.

Of all the elements, carbon proved to be the most versatile; it’s able to form bonds in four directions (versus one to three for most other elements), giving rise to complicated, information-rich, three-dimensional structures.

it’s clear that the physical laws of our universe are precisely what they need to be to allow for the evolution of increasing levels of order and complexity.9

Chemistry was born a few million years later as atoms came together to create relatively stable structures called molecules.