Motus Mentis

I’ve written in the past about the idea, popularized by the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, of an impending “Technological Singularity”: a convergence of accelerating progress in computer science, neuroscience, and biotechnology that will, in a few decades, lead to a kind of critical mass in all these fields, with historically discontinuous effects. (If, as theistic conservatives often say, modern-day scientific physicalism has become a sort of secular religion, then the Singularity is its the beginning of its eschaton, the opening of the door to Man’s apotheosis.)

Not too long ago some of Google’s founders, together with Mr. Kurzweil and others, established at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA the Singularity University, of which my good friend Salim Ismail, co-founder of my former employer PubSub Concepts, is the executive director. I haven’t visited it yet, but it already appears to be a remarkable hive of creative activity. (Still no football team, though.)

Today’s New York Times business section featured a big front-page article about SU. Have a look here.