Technology has a habit of running away from us. When a breakthrough occurs or a floodgate opens, explosive, exponential growth often follows. And, according to futurologist Ray Kurzweil, we are only an historical moment away from “The Singularity.”
The Singularity, for Kurzweil, is defined as “a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.” The idea is that discovery and progress will “explode with unexpected fury.”
How you view Kurzweil will depend largely on your existing biases — and perhaps how much science fiction you have read. It is certainly true to say that technology in the last century has increased at a rate far beyond that of past centuries and millennia. The world of the 2020s is unrecognizable compared to that of the 1920s. Our great-great-grandfathers would look at the world today as they would an H.G. Wells novel.
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But, it is equally true that there are many obstacles in the way of unlimited technological progress. We ultimately do not know if this rocket is going to take off — or if it does, whether it will hit a very hard glass ceiling.
