BooksBarbecue
Back Grime Save as PDF
Chapters (69)
  1. Copyright Notice
  2. THE MILLENNIUM
  3. DON
  4. HANNAH
  5. KAREN
  6. DON’S MOTHER
  7. PETER
  8. THE MOTHER
  9. DR. BROWN
  10. HANNAH’S FATHER
  11. SERGEJ
  12. MOTHER
  13. THE RUSSIAN
  14. THOME
  15. THE RED DEER
  16. THOME’S FATHER
  17. WALTER
  18. KAREN’S BIG BROTHER
  19. PATUK
  20. OLD WOMAN
  21. POLICEWOMAN
  22. BEFORE THE INTERMISSION
  23. INTERMISSION
  24. HUMANITY
  25. SIR ERNEST (EARL)
  26. COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT
  27. PROGRAMMER
  28. MA WEI
  29. CARL
  30. THE FRIENDS (BEN, KEMAL, PAVEL, MAGGY, RACHEL)
  31. BODYCAM MAN
  32. MAGGY
  33. MR. M.
  34. ROGER
  35. THE AVERAGE ENGLISHMAN
  36. THE LAB DIRECTOR
  37. HONEST MAN
  38. JOB NOMADS
  39. COURIER
  40. BOXER
  41. ATTACKERS
  42. THE EIGHT-YEAR-OLD PROSTITUTE
  43. KEVIN
  44. SWEATING MAN
  45. BERTA AND HENRY’S
  46. RACHEL
  47. YOUNG MEN
  48. ARTHUR
  49. STUDENT
  50. ROB
  51. A WOMAN
  52. PHILOSOPHER
  53. THE MATTRESS SELLER
  54. ABDULLAH B.
  55. THE PRO-LIFERS
  56. PROFESSOR DR. KUHN
  57. JON
  58. PROFESSOR
  59. MIDDLE-AGED TEACHER
  60. WOMAN WITH THE THINNING HAIR
  61. BANKER
  62. THE CHILD
  63. THE NEW PRIME MINISTER
  64. MADAME CECILIE
  65. THE JOURNALIST
  66. THE WORLD
  67. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  68. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  69. Newsletter Sign-up

The part of history dominated by humans

Will ‘converge’ in approximately the year Omega = 2050. (I prefer to call the convergence point Omega, because that’s what Teilhard de Chardin called it a hundred years ago, and because ‘Omega’ sounds better than ‘singularity’—it sounds a bit like ‘Oh my god.’) The error bars on most dates below seem, according to current knowledge, to be less than ten percent. Why the time intervals between decisive historical events are always so perfectly distributed, I do not know.”

Ω = ca. 2050

Ω− 13.8 billion years: Big Bang

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 3.5 billion years: first life on earth

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 0.9 billion years: first animal-like life

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 220 million years: first mammals

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 55 million years: first primates (our ancestors)

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 13 million years: first hominids (our ancestors)

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 3.5 million years: first stone tools (“technological dawn”)

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 800,000 years: first controlled fire (next great technological breakthrough)

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 210,000: first anatomically modern humans (our ancestors)

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 50,000 years: first behaviorally modern humans colonize the earth

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 13,000 years: Neolithic revolution, farming and animal husbandry

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 3,300 years: beginning of the first population explosion in the Iron Age

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 800 years: fire and iron combined; first firearms and rockets (in China)

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 200 years: start of second population explosion during the Industrial Revolution

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 50 years: Information Revolution, digital nervous system spans the globe, WWW, mobile phones for all

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 12 years: cheap computers more powerful than human brain; artificial intelligence at human level?

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 3 years:??

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 9 months:????

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 2 months:????????

Ω− 1/4 of this time:

Ω− 2 weeks:????????????????

(a simplified treatise based on Prof. J. Schmidhuber, computer scientist, AI developer)

It’s going well

For

HUMANITY

They keep getting older.

People. And why not, since life is getting more enjoyable even in underdeveloped countries, as the Western world calls them. Ever since Western firms started selling clean water there and with the aid of China created blossoming landscapes in Pakistan, Uganda, Somalia, and wherever the hell else. Mechanized agriculture operations as big as countries, battery companies, solar farms brought work, prosperity, development and devices for the natives.

And technology. OMG.

Technology cures cancer, makes disabled people walk, deaf people hear, it provides old people with robot seals to cuddle and nursing staff to love. Ever more exhausting, sickness-inducing occupations disappear into the open arms of artificial intelligence. All the world’s knowledge is available online to everyone, computers have become a foodstuff that’s increasingly available to the entire population. There are so many positive, exhilarating aspects of development that it doesn’t seem improbable that our daily life could soon be like a shining utopia, with laughing people who, well-educated and equipped with wonderful opportunities for self-actualization, stand around green spaces hailing flying taxis.