"The Human Exhibit"
Oil on panel, 32" x 35"
Completed on June 27, 2013.
This painting is in response to some ideas about the concept called the Technological Singularity. The basic idea is that because our technology grows at an exponential rate, the time approaches when the intelligence of machines may soon surpass that of humanity. In this case, what will happen? Will we survive? Will we be replaced? Will we merge with our technologies? Perhaps machines will keep some fragment of humanity in some museum exhibit as a sentimental reminder of the reckless and foolish species. The only species capable of destroying the planet but also capable of creating their own replacements.
The simple idea of the singularity goes something like this...
Everyone is aware that computers become smaller, more powerful and cheaper each year. In this way we can say that technology grows each year. This part is a given, but the average person doesn't have much reason to wonder if this "growth" is steady, what speed it is happening or what the implications of this growth are.
Well, the rate of this growth has actually been charted since the 1970's and has been shown to follow a rigid and consistent trend. That trend is called Moore's Law and basically says that computing power doubles every 12-18 months. This doubling is called "exponential growth". Exponential growth is very powerful and important to understand. Let's see what it looks like by doubling some numbers.
We will take a number and double it 35 times. Keep an eye on the numbers to watch how they seem to grow slowly, no big deal at first. Then once they reach a certain size it gets kind of crazy!!
Here we go...
1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096,8192,16384,32768,65536,131072,262144,524288,
1048576,2097152,4194304,8388608,16777216,33554432,67108864,134217728,268435456,
536870912,1073741824,2147483648,4294967296,8589934592,17179869184.
So, starting with the number 1 and doubling it 35 times, we reached the number 17,179,869,184. This is over 17 billion. This shows how exponential growth works. It isn't impossible to understand and it's also easy to see why the computer in your cell phone is actually more powerful than the worlds smartest supercomputer was in 1960, which took up an entire room.
This exponential growth is no longer limited to advancement of computers though. Now it is seen in anything that can be called "information technologies". Since it is easy to learn and grasp the concept behind exponential growth, as we saw in the experiment (1,2,4,8,16,32...) it should also be possible to ask the question "where is this going"?
If computer power and information technologies grow at an exponential rate (doubling every year) then what will the future look like in 20 years? In 50 years? At what point do our computers become more complex than the human mind? And at what point do they become too complex for us to understand them? This is where things move into the realm of science-fiction and fantasy. Any guesses as to what will happen in the future, once you grasp this exponential growth in technology becomes impossible.
In the words of Carl Sagan, who was both a scientist and science-fiction writer, "If you understand exponentials, the key to many secrets of the Universe is in your hand."
Ray Kurzweil, inventor, entrepreneur and current chief of engineering at Google says "we will see changes in the next 90 years equivalent to the last 10,000 years, and in the next 100 years changes equivalent to the last 20,000 years."
What ever the case may be, it promises not to be boring and is definitely food for thought and creativity.
