Been having quite the arguments at ImmInst over your Historical perspective piece. Also been having quite the debate over at H+ about the inevitability of technological progress. I always find it highly amusing to have a long debate, and then come over here to Foresight and suddenly read a post you’ve made which seems to echo the same reasoning I’ve been following.

To wit, I’ve been arguing for a while, and recently on H+, that mankind has gone through numerous singularities. The Industrial Revolution was one, but the one I really find fascinating is the printing press.

Many people don’t see the printing press as that big of a deal, but it truly was a singularity. No-one who was living before the printing press could really understand exactly was mass printing could lead to. Yes, it’s quite possible to describe how a printing press works to a pre PP person, but they would have never foreseen the Reformation, the fall of the feudal system, the Renaissance, the age of reason, and eventually the rise of democracy, modern industrial society, and eventually the internet.

All shockwaves from the Singularity caused by the Printing Press.

I think too many people view the singularity as a techno savior. Let’s make smarter than us AI and they will solve all our problem. But to me, it’s the technologies that lead to the Singularity which I find the most fascinating.

I doubt you remember, but in the 90′s I wrote to you about the possibility of Utility Fog uploads, i.e. uploads interfacing with the physical world through the use of Utility Fog robots. This was way back on my days discussing things on Sci.nanotech, and the original slash.dot and Nano.dot. Since then, so many things have happened that it really excites me.

I truly believe we will see some amazing advances in the next decade. The sheer number of advances made just this year alone is staggering. With the release of the Project Natal for the XBox, it looks like we finally have all the elements in place for commercial VR available to the public, not just in labs, and I think in many ways, that is going to speed up the research in most everything else. VR can give people a taste of that so hard to visualize future of nanomanufacturing, and the economy of abundance it will bring, as well as the abilities which human enhancement can provide, and the personal freedom to alter their bodies to suit themselves. By allowing us to test drive the future, not only will it spark interest in creating that future, it will allow us to understand the dangers which we must be aware of and counter.

The year I was born, Man first walked on the moon. But through the 70′s and the 80′s it seemed like the world was only going to be a drab dreary dystopia. I lived my teens and early twenties wishing I had been born at any time but this one. I would have rather been fighting off the Cardinal’s men next to D’Artagnan or exploring space on the Enterprise. Anywhere but in this world that seemed only made of broken dreams and empty promises.

And then I read a book called Nano, and read about the ideas of Drexler, and you, and others, and realized that far from being in a world without hope, we stood on the brink of a world in which the wildest dreams of Asimov and Heinlein, and Clark were but the faintest of hints of what would come.

I’ve been watching that dream come true step by step ever since.

So in addition to enjoying reading your blog, let me just say thank you for making me realize that I live in the most interesting of all times to be alive, and making me take an interest in the real world.

And most of all, for giving me hope. Even if it is nano-sized