According to Ray Kurzweil, we will reach the era of technological Singularity in 2020 or even before. And this will simply happen because of the very predictable cross-impacts of immanent IT trends that we are experiencing at the moment. The amount of statistical backroud material which Kurzweil provides in his truly massive book "The singularity is near", to defend his strong argument, is astonishing and simply convincing. Kurzweil, the contemporary IT development Guru and practicioner, obviously knows what he is talking about. Yet, he doesn't leave the discussion of the alleged inevitable singularity just on the arguments of long term statistics. He uses hundreds of pages in his book just to answer all counter arguments from different disciplines and world views that he has faced during past years. I must admit, it is difficult to find any new counter arguments to his theory after reading the book. However, the book can be considered merely just a start of discussion, instead of closed chapter. Kurzweil doesn't actually discuss the possible implication and scenarios that there will be after we reach the singularity. Instead, he just closes the argumentation by saying that the era, after we reach the tipping point of singularity, will cover infinite possibilities and roads which human kind can take which will make it quite impossible to rise any further predictions. Thus, the discussion over the implications of singularity are very much open for further visionary work. This article will contribute this discussion with five potential new scenarios for the paths of the human kind after we have faced the peak of the new era. But before that, I will explain what Kurzweil means by singularity.

Singularity has been too often misunderstood or over simplified by saying that it means either, an era when humans and machines merge and humans become super intelligent, or an era when machines become more intelligent than people. Well, both sentences are true according to Kurzweil, but only partly. Kurzweil does say that "singularity is a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impacts so deep, that human life will be irreversible transformed. (...) Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots", but that's just reference to the most immanent outcomes, not to the trends and reasons behind them of course. Thus the concept of singularity refers to much more profound megatrend than just that. It comes from mathematics where it refers to certain infinity in number of decimals, meaning number is impossible to calculate. In astrophysics singularity refers to infinity in some physical place, e.g. the infinite gravity at the centre of a black hole. In other words, there are no ways to measure the amount of gravity there as the gravity there is simply endless. Hence, astrophysics say blackhole's gravity is singular or infinite.

The key law which determinates the emergence of IT singularity in human world is the power law, or in other words the law of exponental growth. For most people it is hard to fully understand the difference between linear trend and exponental trend, and the meaning of really being in exponental trend growth curve for a long time. Linear growth means that change expands by repeatedly adding a constant e.g. gaining ten new units every year. Exponental growth means that change expands by repeatedly multiplying by constant e.g. tripling the number of units every ten year. In a long run being in exponental trend growth curve means that there will inevitably be a period ahead when the pace of change turns into vertical - straight upwards. Exponential change is slow in the beginning, and it seems quite slow even after quite long period of time, but it will eventually turn into explosive change in certain point. In other words, when we reach the tipping point in the exponential growth curve, the change in one very short moment can be infinitely long explosive jump over uncountable number of societal and technological eras. And that's what IT singularity is all about.

And what is the key driver of change once we reach the tipping point of singularity? That is finally obtaining a machine which can design better machines, which again can design better and better machines in increasing speed. This is the point when limited human resources are no longer needed in any design. And this tipping point is near according to Kurtzweil.

Further reading

Bloom, Howard (2000): Global Brain: The evolution of mass mind of the big bang to the 21st century. New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Kurzweil, Ray (2005): The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. New York, Viking.

Kurzweil, Ray (1999): The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York, Penguin Books.

Kuosa, Tuomo (2010): Scenarios of design and life once we reach singularity. Blog writings in servicedesign.tv.