[bksvol-discuss] Nonfiction Submission: The Spike by Damien Broderick

  • From: "Evan Reese" <mentat1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:27:43 -0400

Hey Folks,

I just put up The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed by Rapidly 
Advancing Technologies by Damien Broderick. It has been completely read through 
and spell checked, all page breaks and page numbers accounted for, all fonts 
adjusted. Long synopsis below.

The rate at which technology is changing our world--not just on a global level 
like space travel and instant worldwide communications but on the level of what 
we choose to wear, where we live, and what we eat--is staggeringly fast and 
getting faster all the time. The rate of change has become so fast that a 
concept that started off sounding like science fiction has become a widely 
expected outcome in the near future--a singularity referred to as the Spike.

At that point of singularity, the cumulative changes on all fronts will affect 
the existence of humanity as a species and cause a leap of evolution into a new 
state of being.

On the other side of that divide, intelligence will be freed from the 
constraints of the flesh; machines will achieve a level of intelligence in 
excess of our own and boundless in its ultimate potential; engineering will 
take place at the level of molecular reconstruction, which will allow 
everything from food to building materials to be assembled as needed from 
microscopic components rather than grown or manufactured; we'll all become, 
effectively immortal by either digitizing and uploading our minds into organic 
machines or by transforming our bodies into illness-free, undecaying exemplars 
of permanent health and vitality.

The results of all these changes will be unimaginable social dislocation, a 
complete restructuring of human society, and a great leap forward into a 
dazzlingly transcendent future that even SF writers have been too timid to 
imagine.



Evan


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