A German astronomer introduced the concept of the black hole in 1916. Now astronomers have been joined by other scientists who are applying the model in a totally different context, to technological change.

The capabilities of computers are growing exponentially, these scientists say, including the ability for machines to act autonomously. And there is no apparent limit. We are approaching an event horizon, they say, where we will see accelerating hyper-growth in machine intelligence, hurtling inevitably towards a singularity where machines will become more intelligent than man. Proponents of the idea believe that this is likely to happen no later than the year 2030.

The idea of a technological singularity was first introduced by computer pioneer John Von Neumann in the 1950s, who observed, “the ever accelerating progress of technology… gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.”

Vernor Vinge, a mathematician and computer scientist at San Diego State University, applied Von Neumann’s idea to machine intelligence in a paper he gave at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute in March 1993.

“The acceleration of technological progress,” Vinge said, “has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence.”

“I think it's fair to call this event a singularity,” he said. “It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace. Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown.”

Vinge’s ideas have since attracted a growing number of serious scientists, as well as fringe groups who see this as the next and final stage of human evolution.

One of the most articulate proponents of the idea is Raymond Kurzweil –inventor of the first flatbed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first reading machine for the blind, the first computer-based music synthesizer and the first commercially marketed speech recognition system. Kurzweil has built and sold four companies that created entirely new technologies and new markets. He continues an astonishing track record of innovation with a number of new initiatives, including FATKAT (applying evolutionary algorithms to stock market decisions) and Medical Learning Company (creating a simulated patient for medical education).

Kurzweil published his first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, in 1990. In 1999, he published The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. He is now working on his next book, which will be entitled: The Singularity is Near. This book-in-progress is précised on the web.

In the new book, Kurzweil ponders the implications of the expected singularity. “The bulk of our experiences,” he says, “will shift from real reality to virtual reality. Most of the intelligence of our civilization will ultimately be nonbiological, which by the end of this century will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than human intelligence.”

Kurzweil provides numerous examples of accelerating exponential growth, and predicts that technological change in the twenty-first century will be almost a thousand times greater than the change that occurred in the preceding one hundred years.

Kurzweil and others envision a future where the boundary between biological and nonbiological life becomes increasingly blurred. Predictions of brain scanners, brain enhancement, experience beamers, and disembodied intelligence sound more like science fiction than any conceivable reality and, while intriguing, the prospect of this actually happening is profoundly unsettling.

If we are truly hurtling down the path to such a singularity, have we already passed the event horizon – the point of no return? This question is now provoking intense debate, as there is growing evidence that there may be more fact than fiction in these speculations.