Google's Deus Ex Machina

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Futurist Ray Kuzweil announced the formation of Singularity University to be located at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, with annual funding of $3.5-million provided by Internet search-engine giant Google.

Kuzweil’s book “Singularity” provided the ideas that inspired the university’s creation and name. Kuzweil wrote:

The 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. There will be no distinction, post-singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality.

What is Singularity University’s ultimate goal, you might ask? “We will gain power over our fates. Our mortality will be in our own hands… nanotechnology will make it possible to create virtually any physical product using inexpensive information processes and will ultimately turn even death into a soluble problem” assures Kuzweil.

Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google Inc. (no kidding, that’s his title), is enthusiastic about his company’s brave new venture:

The challenges facing our planet are profound. Creating a network of future world leaders across the range of exponentially growing technologies addressed by Singularity University will have profound implications. We need the best hearts and minds working together toward a common cause.

Will Wright, creator of the computer games SimCity and Spore, chimed:

I normally build extraordinary virtual environments that evolve with surprising results. Singularity University is going to be an extraordinary birthplace for ideas and breakthrough thinking. I am pleased to be a member of the faculty and look forward to an exciting inaugural year.

If this enterprise seems far-fetched, that’s because it is. Since the above mentioned believe God is dead, their quest betrays the welling desperation in their souls when staring out into what they believe is a dark and pointless universe.

Singularity University seeks to meld biology with technology to manufacture a new human highbred capable of ending hunger, global warming and even death. They add a healthy dose of hubris to the mix by claiming nanotechnology capable of transforming fallen, mortal men into benevolent, omniscient gods. Julius Caesar was content to have the Roman Senate bestow godhood upon him; Google seeks the blessing of a higher authority – Silicon Valley.

The main theme of many science fiction stories revolve around technology achieving such a high level of artificial intelligence, it eventually attains consciousness. It then ensnares a trembling mankind in its cold, metallic grip.

Extensive as the imagination of science fiction writers may be, their fiction will never surpass in cruelty the history of man’s blood-soaked attempts to achieve that same end. And it always begins with a promise to improve the human condition and eventually man himself.

Let me attempt a Mr. Curmudgeon prediction: When Google unveils its prototype cyborg messiah in 2035 –pre-programmed to heal the afflictions of mankind and answer the cosmic questions arising from his tortured existence – the switch will be thrown and the shinny high-tech homunculus will stir and say in a dry monotone, “Sorry Dave, I can’t do that.”

--Mr. Curmudgeon