The World in 2030

The World in 2030 55
future. This is not my standpoint and while many analysts
study technologies in isolation, I believe that it is important
to see them in their social and human contexts. Technology
is no panacea, as we shall see in the later sections of this
report that deal with ‘Climate Change and the Environment’
and ‘The Future of Energy’.
However, I have been certain for some decades that in
creating intelligent machines the human race is in the early
stages of creating a successor to or companion species for
human beings. Many other commentators have reached the
same conclusion. Writing in the New Scientist magazine
Dr James Hughes, 104 Executive Director of The Institute
for Ethics and Emerging Technologies 105 in Connecticut,
observed:
It seems plausible that with technology we can, in
the fairly near future, create (or become) creatures
who surpass humans in every intellectual and creative
dimension. Events beyond this event—call it the
Technological Singularity—are as unimaginable to us
as opera is to a flatworm.
The preceding sentence, almost by definition, makes
long-term thinking an impractical thing in a Singularity
future. 106
We are, however, able to project a likely pathway towards
the point of disjuncture in human evolution that is being
called ‘The Singularity’, even though along the way the ever
increasing rate of technological development will produce
wrenching and continuous change in all of our lives.