Future of technology is hard to fathom

Futurists predict that humanity will achieve a “technological singularity” sometime in this century.
This singularity is described as the event in which the emergence of a superintelligence beyond any human capability that would change the future so radically that we are unable to currently comprehend it.
That’s some heavy stuff to think about. But what’s even more amazing is that it’s predicted to happen within the next 100 years, possibly within the next 50.
That prediction is based off of the exponential advances in human technology from the emergence of life to the present.
Archeological evidence shows humanity first started using stone tools about 2.5 million years ago. It took us another million years to master fire. It took more than another million years to learn agriculture. But from that time the gaps in advancement became smaller and smaller.
Just to show how quickly tech advances, each year we host the Tri-State Gas Engine and Tractor Show here in Portland to admire the engines of the past. Just looking at the advances from those antiques to modern day farm equipment — tractors that can drive themselves via satellite among other automatic capabilities in seeding and chemical application — is downright astounding.
And one main focus of the future seems to be in computer technology, which has rapidly advanced over the past 20 years.  The world’s most powerful supercomputer in 1996 had less power in it than a computer graphics card released in 2010 you can buy now for around $150. The current most powerful super computer is now 10,500 times more powerful than the 1996 No. 1.
So it’s predicted that eventually technology will continue to advance until we hit this singularity, a point where an “intelligence explosion” would happen. A situation would be created where technology itself — likely super powerful artificial intelligence — could continue to create and improve itself infinitely.
And the reason why the term singularity is used — the same term to use to point in a black hole where the human perception of spacetime ceases to function — is that it’s impossible for the human brain to currently understand what might be possible on the other side of it.
Science fiction offers suggestions. Galactic travel? Eradication of all disease? In-home android servants? Total accidental annihilation of humanity?
Even if we’ve pridefully over-estimated our own abilities to advance, I’m still excited to see how far society will grow in my lifetime.
Sure, the thought of advancement to a point that would change the game forever, beyond all my capable reckoning, is somewhat terrifying.
But at the same time it’s thoroughly exhilarating.[[In-content Ad]]