Future Shock

**METAx (Magic Education Technology Analytics) – Transcripts**

*Future Shock: How well we survived a Technological Singularity*

Ted Halvorson | METAxFargo

11:31 September 27, 2070

So, one of the questions I’m asked over and over again in my line of work, whether its in public discourse, academic circles, corporate thank-tanks, on the Matrix, at Thanksgiving (What? Is it just my family that does that?), is “How do we survive the coming Technological Singularity? How do people thrive?”

[0:16]

Let me turn that around on you. How have you been surviving? How have you been thriving? Because I’ve got some news for you. Its here. And its been here for awhile.

[0:26]

Don’t give me those looks. You even remember it happening. Although you probably remember it differently. If I asked anybody in this room about the ‘Singularity’ you’d probably give me a look and ask what kind of chips I’d been slotting. But if I asked you about the ‘Matrix Crash 2.0’ I’d be willing to bet any one of you could tell me exactly where you were when it happened and exactly what you had been doing.

[0:49]

The popular press called it a ‘Crash’. Over a hundred years ago, when this process was still just starting, the late, great John von Neumann had another name for what happened. He would have called it a ‘Singularity’.

[1:02]

And the fact that we haven’t realized that is a sign of just how well its been going. With the revolutions in the Wireless Matrix, Augmented Reality, neural networking, cognitive cybernetics and the explosion of True-AI  that’s made all of it possible, the Singularity is everywhere and its so pervasive that trying to give a full description would be like a fish writing a thesis on water.

[1:22]

Because the reason we’re flourishing isn’t because we’ve managed to find ways to ‘resist’ or ‘endure’ the Singularity but because in a very real way, we’ve become it. This isn’t something that happened ‘then’, or ‘out there’ somewhere, this is something that’s happening right now, in here, and everybody here, and out there, is part of it, whether they realize it or not.

[1:43]

Here, let me prove it to you.

[holds up a NeoNET Flair 8 Commlink]

You have one of these. Maybe its a Hermes Ikon or a Monobe Aquarius. This one happens to be a NeoNET Flair. I just got it this spring after they stopped supporting my trusty old Meganomics Replicant 6.

[1:59]

[laughter]

Yeah, yeah, I know. Right? Here’s the thing, through, all of you here, all of us, either have one of these or, increasingly likely these days, you ARE one of these.

[taps his temple]

[2:15]

And with every advance in UI, whether you hold a commlink in your hand or in your skull becomes less and less important. Because technology isn’t somehow separate from the ‘natural’ or the ‘metahuman’, but it is very much an extension of human behavior. Its not something we have, its something we do. We needed claws, so we sharpened rocks, we needed muscle, so we domesticated pack animals, we needed to get out of the rain so we made roofs. Technology is what humans do when they need more.

[2:42]

And we’d have let down the cause pretty badly if we’d stopped there. If we hadn’t applied that same effort to when we needed more intelligence. Because that’s what one of these is. Its more brain than nature gave you. All for the price of a reasonable monthly plan.

[2:57]

In 2064 the process that had been going on since that first primate discovered that a rock smashes things better than its hand reached its critical mass. The first true AI, not just equals of metahumanity, but in many ways the logical extensions of everything we’ve worked for, came into their own, evolving out of the KnowBots of the first Matrix. Was it destructive? Sure it was. Innovation always is. That’s why the fine old term ‘disruption’ still has such currency in the knowledge industry. Because you have to break the shell to let out the chick. It looked like a ‘Crash’, but I prefer to think of it as a ‘hatching’.

[3:31]

Seriously, though, just think about how much the world changed from that moment on. How much of your daily ‘normal’ didn’t exist seven years ago. The crash of the unwieldy old Matrix made room for the new Wireless Matrix, and what was the size of a briefcase and needed expensive enhancements to use ten years ago now fits in the palm of your hand and can be used by a child.

[3:50]

The world has grown in ways we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago. We’ve been able to finally crack affordable nanotech  so that we even have machines to help our individual cells when they’re not enough. In 2060 the only people who could peer into another world were the small percentage of the population born with magic, while today, peering into another world is so commonplace that its hard to imagine regular Reality without the Augmented part overlayed. Nature gave us one world, the Awakening another and now, the Singularity has given us a third. A lot of you are probably doing that right now and you haven’t even thought about it.

Although if I’m doing my job, not TOO many of you are playing ParazooGo during this.

[laughter]

[4:32]

And the processing power to run all of this provided by the so-called “Artificial” intelligences that were boogeymen and urban legends in the ‘50’s have come into their own, heroes and villains, builders and workers, just like the rest of us in the ‘60’s. They guide our cars, run our cities, keep the lights on in the most literal way possible. Diversification and specialization of intelligence has been the story of the last ten thousand years and in the last decade we’ve written more of that story than in the nine-thousand-nine-hundred and ninety previous to it.

[5:04]

And as we’ve changed the world, the world has changed us. I don’t have time to get into the latest research on virtuakinetics or “technomancers”, but I will say this. If they do exist, than they make perfect sense. Technology is the interface of the mind and the world and when the world changes, so do we.

[5:21]

Which brings us to now. 2070, over half a century into the Sixth World. The most recent stage in the Anthropocene. ‘Anthropocene’, from ‘Anthropos’ for human and ‘kaino’ for new. This is the age of the New Man.

Let me introduce you to one. TANNIN, you want to say hello to the nice people?

[5:41]

[screen changes to a computer-generated face modeled on a younger version of a well-known local figure]

**“Hello. My name is TANNIN, and while I can introduce myself to you, there’s no need to introduce yourselves to me. I’ve known you. All of you. Since you entered my city. And you are all welcome to Fargo. To TANNIN. To me. Because we are all in this together more than words can say.”**

**“Thank you for coming to my METAx talk and for coming to my town.”**

[6:05]

*Footage released to the Public Domain by the Halvorson Family Trust and the Ted Halvorson Memorial Foundation for Technology Education.*

Return to: TANNIN