The Singularity of Knowledge
By: Michael Woronko
Tags: Philosophy, Technology, Future, Knowledge, Science

Synergy

Beyond imagination, the human mind is also gifted with the ability to decipher patterns — to make sense out of nonsense.

Especially, we seem to love common denominators.

So much so that the biggest breakthroughs in science have revolved around unification as much as they have around discovery. Routinely, we’ve made paradigm-shattering discoveries by simply tying loose ends together, and we continue to operate under this ambition (it can be said that our next target in line is dark matter).

The greatest minds in history have understood this need for unification to be the ultimate prerogative. Some, like Nikola Tesla, had subsequently failed in their connecting of certain dots while others, like James Clerk Maxwell, had become famous for it.

The problem is that it’s not easy. Far from it.

As clever as we are, we’ve compartmentalized our systems of knowledge into such distinct and divided segments of study that it’s near impossible for one student to embark upon two opposing streams of belief, something that had been the norm only a hundred years ago.

The noösphere promises us a rekindling of this comprehensive approach to understanding our world. With its synergetic potential and it’s touch-point responsiveness, it holds the ability to take all that we’ve chopped up and bring it back together, even if for a moment, just to see if anything blends together comfortably, anything that we hadn’t had, or couldn’t have had, previously considered.

Because, and this is the main point to digest, the noösphere is able to do something that we ourselves have a hard time doing. It can discern and catalogue, cross-boundaries and synthesize streams of information. It can employ numerous algorithms that would take us an absurdly long time to match in terms of efficacy.

Sounds like A.I. doesn’t it?

It doesn’t necessarily have to be, though artificial intelligence will certainly be an integral part of its picture, as it currently is.

The noösphere is the environ. We are the data points.

Twitter lets political discourse unfold in real time. Instagram lets people share their experiences with a taste of immediacy. TikTok, well, it may serve useful in some respect one day.

Quora, Reddit, Wikipedia. All far from perfect, but we’re getting there.

Once we’re able to communicate faster and better and once we’re able to contextualize and idealize more comprehensively than ever before, we’ll see the connecting of a new array of dots that we hadn’t previously thought possible.

Knowledge will come together, under a real singularity, and harmonize itself to a point whereby we’ll have as comprehensive of an outlook as we can imagine.

Whatever this really means (and it may mean many very different things), it will be the milestone of our civilization.

Technologically, socially, environmentally, astronomically, biologically — information will reach the apex of interconnectedness; in so doing, we’ll have the most informed understanding that there can possibly be (correlating to our rate of new discoveries) at any given time.

Our segregation of various fields of study will no longer be isolating; our subjective experiences and insights will no longer be so subjective; our vision will no longer be obstructed by division.

The singularity of knowledge — it’s already happening, but it’s about to speed up to rates we won’t even realize until we’re able to look back on it.

Our only obligation, it seems, is to nurture this process rather than standing back and watching it unfold on its own under the presumption of a far-and-away singularity that we don’t have enough time or imaginative power to consider.

In essence, we are the singularity.