L.A. Futurists / Singularity

Friday I went to a monthly meeting of an L.A. Futurists group, lead by John Smart of Singularity Watch. Very enjoyable and interesting people. It didn't quite dawn on me before afterwards what the talk about Singularity is about. It is sort of a concept of technological ascension, where a bunch of rapidly moving trends come together into a quantum evolutionary leap for humanity. It makes sense to extropians, of which I'm sure there are a bunch in NCN as well. Extropians are a bit hard to describe, but it is a sub-culture of technologically oriented people who stereotypically believe in a peculiar mix of things such as cryogenic life extension, artificial intelligence, genetic augmentation of the human body, optimistic materialism, etc. I used to hang out in extropian discussion groups for a while, but I can't entirely connect with the mindset. more >