(idea) by stash Tue Apr 17 2001 at 20:08:21
Used Books and Singularity Conversation

  • I'm with my Dad and a young boy, about to leave on a road trip. We've loaded up the minivan and are headed out. Just before we leave town, my Dad stops in front of a used bookstore and tells me to go in a buy three particular books, old classics that he wants to give to the young boy. I think the boy is a relative, perhaps a little brother or nephew. I go into the store and find the books, small leather-bound volumes that smell as old as they look. Two of them are reasonably priced, one with a dusty red cover, the other in blue. The third, Brothers McMullen (the only title I can remember but I think was supposed to be Brothers Karamazov) is obviously the oldest and the spine is coming apart. The price is $18 and I see inside that it's a first edition from the 19th century. I go outside and tell the prices to my Dad who decides to leave the expensive one behind. I purchase the other two and we go on our way.

  • In my high school. I'm in class and bored to death, so I sneak out and walk to my locker. Opening it up, I step inside where there's room enough for my small chair to sit in. I rest there for a while, eating almonds, until someone hears me and calls attention to me. I leave the locker and walk into another classroom. The teacher is one of my college professors, Wesley Mackey. He shows me a new educational poster he just purchased. It graphs humanity's accelerating technological progress over time and projected slightly into the future, alongside the fundamental physical limits imposed by physics (speed of light, Planck radius, etc.). We discuss it, Mackey mostly smiling as I follow a series of implications. I say that the chart plainly shows that technology can progress to an infinite degree while still staying within the fundamental limits. Even more astoundingly, by extrapolating from the trends that we've held to since the beginning of technology, it looks like we'll reach infinite that point of infinite progress around 2035, in an amazing technology singularity. Mackey laughs, seeing that I got it. I laugh too. The world will be remade in our image.

I like it!