The Singularity Is Near

For more than 180,000 years, Homo sapiens’ only record was the oral tradition. Stories and traditions were passed down from generation to generation via the spoken word. The earliest known writing was produced around 3400 BC. The introduction of symbols to stand in for words introduced a paradigm shift in human evolution. People relied on and developed this mode of recordkeeping for almost 5,000 years before the printing press was invented in 1440. Suddenly, reading and writing were accessible to more people, widening the collection and distribution of knowledge. Then, a mere 400 years later in 1868, the typewriter was invented, bringing text production into home and office. In 1971—only 103 years after the development of the typewriter—the first email was sent. Twenty-one years after this email, the first text message was sent. The history of language exploded after the creation of the written word, increasingly pressing on the gas pedal. The space between each step grew smaller and smaller.

Central to Ray Kurzweil’s work is the law of accelerating returns. Kurzweil argues that advances made in science and technology do not build upon one another in a linear fashion. Instead, human advances multiply, shooting out in multiple directions like dendrites, speeding up the rate of development.