Arthur C. Clarke said once that advanced technology would seem like magic to a primitive civilisation. So far however, we've not seen a lot of magic in the visible universe so what does this mean for the proponents of technological singularity? If technology on a scale less that a hundred years more mature than our own level of advancement is likely to bring about a state of god like power in a civilisation, why are we not inundated by enlightened cyborgs?
I have an absolute belief that the universe is teeming with life. It is so unimaginably huge and organic chemistry so simple, after-all, it works without intervention by scientists, that there must be more people looking up at us from out there than there are here looking up at them.
Singularity should nullify the Fermi Paradox because any civilisation even a few decades more than ours should, by rights, have absolute control over the physicality of at-least their solar systems and possibly entire clusters of stars yet we see no evidence for engineering on the scale of a Ringworld or a Dyson Sphere. We should be able to see magic happening somewhere!
What does this imply? Is singularity possible at-all? Do civilisations that manage it systematically fall prey to the AI they create? Do such civilisations become so isolated, insular and introspective that they remain in place, effectively stagnant in their virtual worlds? Do they automatically transcend, leave the four comfortable dimensions and go brane-hopping never to return?
Whatever happens. If we are truly the most advanced civilisation in the universe we are either lucky to the billionth power or are soon to become equally as lonely.
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