Likely singularities

Posted Dec 10, 2008 22:55 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)
In reply to: Likely singularities by ncm
Parent article: Interview: Vernor Vinge

History has seen many singularities, but none yet worldwide unless you count internet, air travel, telegraph, railroad, agriculture, etc.

Interesting. Can you elaborate on that, please?

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Likely singularities

Posted Dec 11, 2008 2:51 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

It's a bit off-topic, but read "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. Read it for its own sake. It includes examples of singularities successfully averted.

Most of my examples above are not so great; probably the global singularities in our past are actually limited to adoption of agriculture and, earlier, language, and the near-extinction event ca. 50K B.P. (maybe a climate-affecting eruption).

As noted elsewhere, a Vinge singularity is just an event after which the world becomes incomprehensible to someone raised before it occurred.

Likely singularities

Posted Dec 11, 2008 14:08 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

I'm sure that happened to me in about 1991...