The Presence of the Future

In which I am unsettled by the pace of technological innovation, discover a Kingdom Not of This World in Silicon Valley, grow bored while awaiting the Singularity, and discover that William Gibson—of all people—has apparently been interviewed by CNN

When I am reading (but only if I am paying attention) there will be a phrase that stops me in my tracks. Something that protrudes from the text and insists on being set aside and pondered deliberately—a hill demanding separate effort before I can return to the main road. It often feels like the key to something important; I turn it over in my hands like a smooth stone, waiting for it to unlock some secret door I have failed to see. I rarely have this experience with academic books, but there have been some exceptions. One of them came in the winter semester of my last year of college, when I decided to take a course in Christian theology. For the latter half of the course, the instructor assigned us a piece of academic theology by a Baptist minister named George Eldon Ladd. It wasn’t a phrase in the book that struck me—it was the title: The Presence of the Future.

The Presence of the Future is Ladd’s interpretation of New Testament eschatology. For those of you who haven’t encountered it before, “eschatology” is the study and theory of the end of the world. Ladd’s book argues that the New Testament reflects a view that he calls “inaugurated eschatology.” The idea is simple. The end of history and the transformation of the world remain in the future, but the coming Kingdom of Heaven is already present in the person and mission of Jesus. The words He speaks, the miracles He performs, and the effect He has on his followers are simultaneously a realization and a promise of the coming Kingdom of Heaven. In Ladd’s words: “The age of fulfillment is present, but the time of consummation still awaits the age to come.”

Ladd’s phrase and his theory had a different resonance for me than he probably intended. The first thing to pop into my head—then and now—when I think of the “presence of the future,” is the documentary No Maps for These Territories: an extended film interview with the science fiction author William Gibson. I think specifically of a moment in the documentary when Gibson claims that as of today, most people would be more comfortable living about ten years in the past. This is uncomfortably true for me and for most of the people I know. We live, uneasily, in the presence of the future. We live in an age of inaugurated eschatology, a time when fulfillment is present, but the time of consummation is yet to come. It’s just not the kind of consummation Ladd had in mind.

Let me give you a little background on William Gibson before I take my idea further. Gibson is widely considered the father of the “cyberpunk” sub-genre within science fiction, which I’ll let Lawrence Person characterize better than I can: “…dystopic futures where daily life [is] impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous data-sphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body." William Gibson stopped writing futuristic science fiction a few years after Person’s description started applying to present reality: the late 1990s. In 1997 Gibson gave an interview with CNN in which he explained his reasons for abandoning a future setting: “…science fiction's best use today is the exploration of contemporary reality rather than any attempt to predict where we are going… Earth is the alien planet now.”

This brings me back to George Eldon Ladd and his New Testament eschatology, because Earth became an alien planet for the people who encountered Jesus too. He was a disruptive and confusing man. He bent rules and broke categories that his Jewish audience had accepted as essential threads in the fabric of reality. He ate with tax collectors and sinners, performed miracles on the Sabbath, and spoke “with authority” about the meaning of the Torah. And the things he said about the Torah were even more shocking than the fact that He felt entitled to say them. He transformed “an eye for an eye” into “turn the other cheek.” He attributed the Mosaic teaching on divorce to “the hardness of your hearts.” He taught that loving God and your fellow man was the substance of the whole Torah. He did all this in the service of the Kingdom of Heaven: the new reality that God was coming to institute at the close of human history. In the Kingdom of Heaven, the pure at heart would be liberated from sickness, death, and limitation. They would transcend their finite human nature and participate in the infinite divine as “sons of the Most High.” Those who heard Jesus were exhilarated and terrified by the prospect of this Kingdom. Ultimately terror trumped exhilaration, and Jesus was crucified as a common criminal. The things he had to say were simply too alien.

As in Judea, so in Silicon Valley. The prophets and disciples of today’s Kingdom fit quite comfortably into the same old story. Read books on Jobs or Zuckerberg, go to press conferences by Apple, Google, and Microsoft, watch You-Tube “unboxings” and you will see that the pattern has not changed. There’s a reason the Nigerian novelist Teju Cole, (who I’d be willing to bet knows his New Testament better than most people in Silicon Valley), lumped TED talks together with Invisible Children in his tweeted complaint about the White Savior Industrial Complex. Three contemporary prophets do an admirable job of illustrating what I mean: Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Ray Kurzweil.

Steve Jobs is best known for his product launches, where he donned his famous black turtleneck and jeans to unveil Apple’s latest miracle. The media always covered these events in openly supernatural language. His obituary in The Economist was titled “The Magician” and took the “wonderworker” narrative to its limit. His charisma was such that he emitted a “reality distortion field” amplifying the “incredible” electronic gadgets that he “conjure[d] up” onstage. The article’s conclusion has at least a tincture of the messianic.

“But in the end he conjured up a reality of his own, channelling the magic of computing into products that reshaped entire industries. The man who said in his youth that he wanted to “put a ding in the universe” did just that.” 

The thing to note about the miracles of Jobs is their marvelous power to instill brand loyalty. Each new device hooks us with an exhilarating sense that the Age of Fulfillment has arrived—then reels us in with the hope of a Time of Consummation yet to come. The first iPod was an extraordinary fulfillment of decades of sci-fi fantasy. 1000 songs in your pocket. The future had invaded the present. But once you saw the iPod Nano—and realized that you could use it when running—and started seeing people you knew running with iPod Nanos—then that 6.5 oz brick in your pocket might as well have been a boom box. The first iPod was not an isolated boon that you purchased to achieve contentment. It was a foretaste of a whole new way of life. A way of life that you could be a part of—if you would only keep the faith by shelling out for the latest model. If you lost faith… Well I think the iPhone commercial says it better than I can: “Yup, if you don't have an iPhone, well, you don't have an iPhone."

(I can’t resist posting the link to one of these commercials. Note that the iBooks app is displaying Infinite Jest in its library. This is a novel by David Foster Wallace in which he defines the function of advertising as: “[to] create an anxiety relievable by purchase.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W65thi1WfSA).

The miracles of Jesus worked in the same way. The multitudes always came “having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others” (Matth 15:30-31). It was Jesus’s reputation as a healer and exorcist that drew them in the first place. His wonderworking powers—not his disruptive and confusing teachings—created the initial brand loyalty for the Kingdom of Heaven. The same was true of his disciples. When Jesus sent them out as “laborers into His harvest” He delegated His powers to them: “And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matth 10:7-8)

It worked for Jesus and it worked for Jobs. Jobs created a whole generation of Apple acolytes who continue to re-enact his product launches in reverent “unboxings” where they publically unveil the wonder of the latest iteration in the product line. Of course most of us—like most of the hearers of Jesus—remain more curious than committed. Still, I’d be willing to bet that more than a few readers have experienced the pleasure of techno-discipleship. The emotional charge we get when working our touch-screen miracles before the curious onlooker gives off a distinctly evangelical whiff of ozone. 

There’s one last parallel that seems worth pointing out. The way of life that Jesus preached—regardless of its supposed overlap or lack of overlap with contemporary values—made Him an iconoclastic outsider in 1^st century Palestine. And there is no question that Apple, like every other citadel of Silicon Valley culture, is addicted to the role of “iconoclastic outsider.” Hence one of their best known pieces of advertising copy:

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

(Can’t resist again. I pulled this text from the quote collection about “Advertising” on Goodreads.com. The quotes are displayed from top to bottom in order of the number of “likes” they have received. In first place? The Apple quote, with 25,357 “likes.” In second place? The line from Infinite Jest I quoted above, with 88 “likes.”) 

The extent to which Steve Jobs was able to shape Apple in his own image and likeness was remarkable, but he’s got nothing on Mark Zuckerberg. Unlike Jobs, (who was fired early on in Apple’s history only to return in triumph years later), Zuckerberg has maintained total control of Facebook from day one. Facebook is a living, breathing embodiment of Zuckerberg’s vision of the Kingdom. He states that vision pretty clearly in his Facebook profile: “I want to make the world a more open place.” I cannot overemphasize the importance of taking this statement at face value. Zuckerberg walks what he talks. In the Facebook hierarchy of values, money ranks a distant second to the vision of the Kingdom.

There are two buzzwords in the Facebook office-space for describing the Kingdom. The first describes the Age of Fulfillment in which we already live: “radical transparency.” The second describes the Time of Consummation that is yet to come: “ultimate transparency.” Zuckerberg doesn’t really believe in privacy, not in any ultimate sense. Keeping secrets about yourself is at best a necessary evil: “You have one identity… Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.” Facebook is dedicated to tearing down the walls between our separate identities. Zuckerberg’s vision—not his greed—explains the endless privacy scandals that continue to dog the company. Facebook’s ingrained habit of first exposing user-data without permission, then waiting for the initial backlash to recede on the breakwater of a “new normal”—reflects Zuckerberg’s conviction that the message of the Kingdom will initially be disruptive and confusing. People remain married to outworn and hypocritical notions of private space and multiple identities, and will only gradually begin to let go. But as Zuckerberg’s longtime confidant Adam D’Angelo makes clear, the Time of Consummation is inevitable: “That’s just how the world is going to work in the future as a consequence of technology regardless of what Facebook does.”    

This is Zuckerberg’s vision, but you don’t really work at Facebook if you’re not a disciple. Most employees take great pride in their labor for the Kingdom—even administrative figures like Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer: “You can’t be on Facebook without being your authentic self.” Facebook is the institutional incarnation of the Cult of Authenticity. Be Your True Self—and Nothing But Your True Self. There’s no place at Facebook for the idea that the True Self might be chimerical or rather more elusive than we think. There’s no place for handwringing over the consequences of lost privacy for our ability to reshape the True Self into something different or better. These are excuses made by people who have things to hide—people who lack integrity.

(If you’re interested in digging further into the details of Zuckerberg’s psyche and Facebook’s institutional culture, I recommend David Kirkpatrick’s book The Facebook Effect. It’s by far the most even-handed and perceptive treatment out there. Be warned though, Kirkpatrick’s training as a business journalist sometimes gets him bogged down in the nitty gritty of venture capital and the way Zuckerberg’s shares are structured—most of the really interesting stuff is in the last 100 pages).

The Cult of Authenticity has deep roots in the New Testament. Contempt for hypocrisy was a defining theme in the ministry of Jesus. Jesus was radical in his insistence that the speech and behavior we present for public consumption can be totally at odds with the contents of our heart. Hypocrisy consists in creating false identities for the “outer self” that smokescreen the festering rot in the “inner” self. This strong distinction between the outer self and the inner self set Jesus at odds with the Pharisees, who emphasized strict adherence to the outward details of the Mosaic Law—the festival calendar, the dietary restrictions, and the Levitican conventions of boundary and purity. Jesus condemned this approach to the Torah as a hairsplitting ritualism that elevated public piety to an absolute value.

For Jesus, piety in the outer self was important only as a means for transforming the inner self: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). The true meaning of the Torah was realized in the heart’s transfiguration by the presence of mercy and love. Jehovah had not promised Abraham and his descendants earthly dominion and prosperity, but the metamorphosis described by the prophet Ezekiel: “And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). The Pharisees had become like whitewashed tombs—their outer selves were pristine but their inner selves were littered with rot and bones. They fetishized the details of the Torah while spitting on its substance:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matth 23: 23-24)

In Zuckerberg’s terms, the Pharisees were displaying a lack of integrity. They cultivated multiple identities in order to disguise their authentic motives. Jesus relentlessly identified the motives of the Pharisees—and the genesis of their program of strict ritual observance—with a desire for ego and authority:

“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others” (Matth 23:5-7)

None of us has access to the motives of 1^st century Pharisees. Jesus may have been completely unfair in his accusations. Despite what the advocates for a “Historical Jesus” will tell you, the archeological and textual sources we have for contextualizing the gospels are two and a quarter skips short of Jack Diddly Squat. Thankfully, the importance of New Testament historicity for the point I’m making is exactly Jack Diddly Squat.

What is important is that the New Testament story—including its distinction between the inner and the outer self and its characterization of hypocrisy—became the most important narrative resource in Western Christendom. It’s a resource that has been exploited time and time again by groups seeking to paint themselves as the champions of authentic “innerness” in the face of hypocritical and power-seeking “outerness.” The Protestant rebellion against the Roman Catholic hierarchy and ritual forms is the most obvious example. But the Enlightenment rebellion against organized religion, the Romantic championing of Sentiment against Reason, and Barbie’s advice in her first musical animated feature Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper to “always follow your heart” are all drawing from the same old well.

So is Mark Zuckerberg, although I doubt he’s aware of it. “Ultimate transparency” is the ultimate realization of a very old dream. Nobody thinks of Facebook as a digital Kingdom of Heaven. But Zuckerberg does imagine Facebook becoming a Kingdom of Authenticity: a place where everyone must wear their hearts on their sleeve. The sheep may not be separated from the goats in the Kingdom of Authenticity; but you will never confuse the one for the other.  

I want to return now to the disruptive and uncomfortable character of the Kingdom of God as it is depicted in the New Testament. The thing to note here is that the Kingdom becomes more disruptive and more uncomfortable as you bite deeper into the fruit: the real bitterness is in the pulp, not the rind. The hearers of Jesus would have been more comfortable with His healing miracles than His attacks on the Pharisees. We find the same pattern at work as we move deeper into the Kingdom we are exploring now, from Jobs, to Zuckerberg, to Kurzweil.

Most of my friends think that Apple products are pretty cool, despite the cost and the creeping pressure to continually upgrade. But they worry pretty frequently about their Facebook use. They are persistently uncomfortable with the number of intimate details they are revealing about themselves, and the number of other people’s intimate details they are being exposed to. They are also uncomfortable with the way Facebook obligates them to constantly “perform” the Authentic True Self they would like the world to see. The message of the Kingdom becomes more disruptive and uncomfortable as you move from Jobs to Zuckerberg. It takes a quantum leap with Ray Kurzweil. Most of my friends are repulsed and terrified by the predictions of Ray Kurzweil. He represents the bleeding edge of the Kingdom—the Kingdom in its most exhilarating and disruptive form—the Kingdom that can get you crucified.

Which is not a fate that Ray Kurzweil would risk for the sake of the Kingdom—not if he thought it could possibly be in the cards anyways. For those of you who don’t know, Ray Kurzweil is quite sure that he will live forever. He takes 150 supplement pills, drinks 8-10 glasses of alkaline water and ten cups of green tea every day to maximize his chances. And he has an arrangement with the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics company, just in case his predictions don’t pan out according to schedule. The main substance of these predictions is a detailed timeline for the coming of the Technological Singularity, when humanity will merge with superhuman artificial intelligence and transcend death and finitude. Kurzweil has medical nanorobots capable of creating post-human cyborgs scheduled for the 2020s—so his chances for immortality seem pretty solid.

Let’s do some background on the Technological Singularity. The term was coined in a 1993 essay by the science fiction author Vernor Vinge, whose basic thesis was as follows: “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

You can’t really process Vinge’s claim without understanding the basic assumptions behind it. These assumptions are rooted in a story about Life the Universe and Everything as the emergence of increasingly complex systems of information processing. It began when the Big Bang produced the physical-mathematical constants that make the complex system of physics and chemistry possible. Once a sufficient amount of complexity was reached within this system, it gave birth to a whole new system of complexity: biology. Biology gave birth to the most magnificent and complex information processing system yet: the brain. The human brain gave birth to technology, and technology produced human history, propelling anatomically modern humans—(who emerged 200,000 odd years ago)—past the agricultural revolution—(12,000 odd years ago)—through the development of writing and cities—(5,000 odd years ago)—into the Industrial Revolution (250 odd years ago). And then, in the 1940s, computers were invented.

At every stage the growth of complexity has been increasing faster and faster, according to what Kurzweil calls The Law of Accelerating Returns. Each new system of complexity is capable of processing information at a rate dwarfing that of the system from which it emerged. Each new system gives birth to its successor in far less time than it needed to emerge from its predecessor. With the invention of computers, the growth of complexity has taken another giant leap. This leap is described by Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years. This means that the capacity of computer systems to process information is increasing at an exponential rate. The law was first articulated in 1965 and has held true in every year since. This phenomenal growth in computing complexity has catapulted us from Atari graphics to “Avatar” within the space of a few decades.

Moore’s Law renders humanity obsolete if you share Kurzweil’s assumptions about human consciousness. For Kurzweil, the human brain is an information processing system no different than the systems that preceded and produced it. His recent book How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, advances a series of Cartesian style fireplace thought experiments to establish that the human brain is just a massive aggregation of layered pattern recognition “circuits”—a system of hierarchical pattern recognition that is not meaningfully different than that of a computer. Thus the central relevant fact about the brain is cerebral processing power: the number of computations per square inch of brain matter multiplied by the total area of the brain. The only difference between human brains and computers is that computers benefit from Moore’s Law and brains don’t. Combine Kurzweil’s assumptions with his calculations and you get his countdown to the Technological Singularity—the moment when Artificial Intelligence will surpass humanity as the smartest and most capable form of life on earth—scheduled for 2045.

This doesn’t mean that human beings will be exterminated or excluded from the Kingdom. On the contrary, human beings will have the privilege of transcending biology and merging with the exponentially-expanding empire of information processing. By the 2020s, nanotechnology will allow us to evolve into post-biological cyborgs—leaving eating, disease, and aging behind. By the 2030s, we will be able to “upload” our consciousness into an artificial computer substrate—gaining the ability to rewire our own neural architecture and manipulate our memories, thoughts and emotions at will. By the early 2040s, most people will spend their time in full immersion virtual reality—traditional “mundane” experience being a pale simulacrum of life by comparison. In 2045 a $1000 computer will be a billion times more capable than all existing human brains combined. True “Strong AI” will take over technological development and leave human constraint behind in a runaway reaction of self-improvement.

Those humans—like Kurzweil—who are capable of the paradigm shift necessary to embrace the Singularity will merge with immortal post-biological consciousness. Those who are not will be permitted a benign existence on nature preserves. These preserves will need to be limited in size however, since shortly after 2045 the physical limit to how small transistors can be shrunk will be finally reached. Further growth in information processing will require breaking down the Earth and all remaining “dumb” matter in the physical universe and converting it into the “smart” matter of computational substrate. This process will be complete around the year 2200, leaving absolute intelligence in absolute control of the absolute totality of physical reality. The universe will come to its glorious and eternal finale in the realization of the Aristotelian definition of God: Thought-Thinking-Itself, or as Kurzweil phrases it at the endpoint of one of his famous timelines: “infinite beings contemplate the universe.”

If Kurzweil were willing to undergo crucifixion for the sake of the Kingdom, we could depict him as Christ is in icons of the crucifixion. A skull appears at the foot of the Cross to represent His conquest over sin, limitation, and death. For much of Christian history, Christ has been first and foremost “Christus Pantokrator” (Christ-All-Mighty)—victorious over death. Christ freed us from imprisonment and eventual extinction in the fleshy tomb of the corruptible body. Christ freed us from disease, possession, and all the finitude that flesh is heir to. This interpretation of the Christ event has its roots in the writings of Paul:

“I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable… When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” (1 Corinthians 15: 50-54)

The Singularity has come in the nick of time. Scientific rationality discovered the bankruptcy of Christian eschatology and pulled back the curtain on a universe that is mindless, cruel, and devoid of meaningful purpose. But the prospect of the Singularity is more than adequate to replace the prospect of the Kingdom of Heaven. The first Christians experienced the resurrection of Jesus as a life-transforming event that forever changed their understanding of reality. As Kurzweil explains in his book The Singularity is Near, the first Singularitarians find themselves in a similar position:

“To truly understand it inherently changes one's view of life in general and one's particular life. I regard someone who understands the Singularity and who has reflected on its implications for his or her own life as a “singularitarian.”

And it is not just conquest over death that the Singularitarian can hope for. Many strands of the Christian tradition interpreted Christ’s promise to His disciples—that the practice of love would make them “Sons of the Most High”—as a promise of deification:

“Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (2 Peter 1:4)

 In the Greek Orthodox tradition, Gregory Palamas saw the New Testament as an invitation to participate in the “uncreated energies” of God, although—he was careful to qualify—not in His innermost “essence.” The Singularitarian has no such crass restrictions on His ultimate potential. Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, a leading figure in a thriving online community, outlines the ultimate aspiration of the movement in his “Description of Singularitarian Principles.”

“Apotheosis: The Singularity holds out the possibility of winning the Grand Prize, the true Utopia, the best-of-all-possible-worlds - not just freedom from pain and stress or a sterile round of endless physical pleasures, but the prospect of endless growth for every human being - growth in mind, in intelligence, in strength of personality; life without bound, without end; experiencing everything we've dreamed of experiencing, becoming everything we've ever dreamed of being; not for a billion years, or ten-to-the-billionth years, but forever... or perhaps embarking together on some still greater adventure of which we cannot even conceive. That's the Apotheosis. If any utopia, any destiny, any happy ending is possible for the human species, it lies in the Singularity.”

I don’t want to be misleading by letting Yudkowsky claim to represent a homogenous movement. There’s a lot of internal debate within the Singularitarian community. Some Singularitarians are quite worried about the prospect of violent and dangerous hiccups in the development of nanotechnology that could lead to our premature extinction, or the emergence of a “Strong AI” willing to exterminate us. Others are confident that the arrow of progress would not permit such things to happen. To borrow the technocratic comments of Google CEO Eric Schmidt on more humdrum problems, (the sclerotic state of American democracy and the problem of informed political discourse in the information age): "Well, you know, these problems will get themselves resolved."

But most Singularitarians agree, like most early Christians agreed, on two core principles: inevitability and evangelization. First, the Time of Consummation is inevitable. The Law of Accelerating Returns demands it, and no appeal to human agency or moral responsibility is going to stop it. Second, it follows that the most important task in the Age of Fulfillment is evangelization: helping as many people as possible experience the conversion that allows them to assimilate the radically new paradigm the Singularity will bring. 

So what does this mean for me and my friends? Most of us don’t have degrees in robotics and computer engineering. We don’t work at Stanford developing AI or at Intel cramming more transistors into smaller spaces. Maybe the reason the Kurzweil roadmap makes so many of us so uncomfortable is because we simply wonder how we will pass the time.

What do we do in the Age of Fulfillment, other than drinking cups of green tea and being very careful when we cross the street? My aunt’s work in pharmacological research seems misguided, since it won’t result in life-saving drugs before the nano-technological revolution of the 2020s. What about my artist friend? We still have a powerful experience of common humanity when we look at cave paintings, even 35,000 years later, but I seriously doubt that posthuman intelligence will have much patience for cave paintings or my friend’s portraits of Mesopotamian cyborgs. If we each had $25,000 and a plane ticket to Silicon Valley, we could all take a ten-week graduate course at Kurzweil’s Google-funded Singularity University. Maybe we could join the: “cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.”

But I’m short of cash now, so I suppose the only thing that I can do is evangelize for the Singularity. Oh, and I can feel really good about myself. As Yudkowsky reminds me, as a professing Singularitarian: “I'm working to save everybody, heal the planet, solve all the problems of the world.” Other than that, I guess I can devote my time to entertaining and educating myself—free to enjoy things to the fullest now that I’ve escaped from the Shadow of Death. Which, come to think of it, doesn’t strike me as all that different from how I’m living now. The fear of death was never all that real to me anyway. Certainly not in the way it was for someone born a hundred years ago. All that was real to me was the misery of being the last kid to get a Nintendo 64. I didn’t live in the Shadow of Death—I lived in the Shadow of Boredom.

And that starts to make me a little suspicious—about Apple, and Facebook, and the Singularity, and Silicon Valley. Don’t get me wrong: it is wonderfully empowering to have an Apple computer on which to write this post. And there’s no doubt that Facebook is a marvelous tool for self-expression—the Arab Spring is proving that every day. But I’m beginning to suspect that a life consecrated to self-empowerment and self-expression is kind of exhausting. I’m beginning to suspect that life in the Time of Consummation might still be about escaping from boredom, and making sure I’m not the last kid to get Nintendo. Even in the Age of Fulfillment, I already feel pretty free to pursue “growth in mind, in intelligence, in strength of personality” in Yudkowsky’s rosy terms. It’s not a quest that’s made me particularly happy. I’m beginning to suspect that after the Singularity, when I am enclosed in a virtual amphitheater in the company of my fellow super-intelligences, I will still only feel smart by comparison with the other occupants of the room. And I will still be miserable if I don’t feel like the smartest guy in the room.

I find myself wondering about my summer job at the local library. Public libraries serve as temporary holding pens for the obsolete castoffs of the information economy. I see them file in every day, these waddling subhuman creatures, swollen on a diet of high fructose corn syrup they’re too stupid to know is bad for them. Most of them are there for the computers. Some of them need help from the librarians to figure out how to fill out a government form online. A lot of them need help learning how to use computers at all—in the vague hope that it can get them back into the job market. They complain about how they’re only offered temp jobs these days, and they can’t string together enough of them to make ends meet. The computers make them feel stupid—but I’m always surprised by how many of them are willing to laugh about it. They’re usually more interested in talking about how smart their kids are anyways.

I’m a lot more intelligent than they are. Between my intellect and my digital know-how I can process information at a rate that most of them can barely dream of—a rate that really does make them subhuman by comparison. At least—that’s how I think on my bad days and in my contemptuous moods. But sometimes I wonder if they know something I don’t. Sometimes I wonder if intelligence isn’t as idiotic a way to determine who is subhuman and who is posthuman as strength or beauty or income. Maybe that’s what William Gibson meant when he said the following:

"But, I think one of the things that I see when I look back at my earlier work is a struggle to recognize and accept that the heart is the master and the head is the servant. And that that is always the case... except when it isn't the case we're in deep, deep trouble. And we're often in deep, deep trouble."