Singularity and Twilight

There is a school of thought in the computer world that is advancing the concept of what they call a technological singularity. The proponents of this concept point to the accelerating pace of computer speed and capabilities and state that there will be a point in the near future where computers gain a kind of consciousness and start to improve themselves. They call this point a singularity in reference to the gravitational singularity of a black hole. A black hole is a collapsed star so massive that gravity doesn’t allow even light to escape and common physical principles don’t apply. This departure from predictability is the essence of the appropriation. Once computers start advancing their own development the speed and direction of that development would be unpredictable. Some proponents of the theory claim that we will reach this singularity within the next 25 years.

There are doubters, of course. Some point to the recent slowing of the rate of increase in computer speed. Some question the basic principles of the argument and accuse the proponents of misleading themselves about the limits of electronic computation. I have a diametrically opposite opinion on the long-term future of computation in our society.

There is another limit on the evolution of computing power and on the widespread use of digital electronic technology in general. That limit is discretionary energy. The development of computer technology has occurred in an economic environment rich in discretionary energy. From the Second World War onward the worldwide production of coal, oil, and natural gas has been increasing and the supply has been far more than sufficient for the basics of human life. For decades we have been using these resources with absurd inefficiency, spending them on recreational mobility, and engaging in non-essential activities such as space exploration. In such a glut there is plenty left over for processor chip manufacturing and facilities full of servers and routers.

Our access to complex electronics and computing power is striking. Many children have cell phones, each device containing more computing power and memory than the mainframe computers of 30 years ago. The devices are affordable even to the relatively poor. Personal computers are common, if not universal. Even more significant are the electronic devices we no longer really notice: the automatic door opener and scanner at the supermarket, the programmable timer on the coffee maker, the smoke alarm, and the cordless phone. Even less visible and more important are the electronics that control our power grid, coordinate our transportation system, and speed our industrial production.

All this electronic intelligence relies on set of interlocking conditions. It is hard to know where to start, given the complexity of the connections. There were the initial scientific discoveries that were, in turn, augmented and speeded by the technological developments they enabled. There was the demand of early adopters, including the space program and the military that jump-started the consumer market, which then had its own early adopters. There was the ramp up into mass production. Then there was the export of high-tech manufacturing to countries with despotic governments and the resulting low standards for workers and the environment. This interaction of technological development, mass demand, and cheap mass production brought the price of electronic computing into a range that the ordinary consumer could afford. It also enabled product designers to include intelligent features in what were previously manual devices.

Underlying this all is discretionary energy. It is this energy that offers masses of people in the industrialized world the prosperity to be a mass market for electronic consumer goods. It is this energy that allows the mass international shipment of these electronic goods. It is this energy that allows industrialized agriculture to displace peasants into the cities of the third world, where they are available to cheaply produce electronic devices and the discrete elements that make up these devices. It is this energy that is available for the mining, transportation, and processing of the materials that go into these devices. Even the cheap plastic casings for all this electronic bounty are made from petroleum products.

The earth is no longer making fossil fuels, and therefore the supply is declining as we consume it. It is a geological fact that the annual production of oil fields, natural gas fields, and coal mines slows as they age. Many observers, myself included, conclude that the world is presently on the long bumpy plateau of peak production that precedes irreversible decline. So what happens when the supply of fossil fuels no longer meets all our superfluous needs? What happens when it no longer meets even our most basic needs for food production, heating, medical care, and the manufacturing of the basic necessities of life? What happens when the supply of diesel fuel and natural gas based fertilizer declines and the sons and daughters of third world factory workers make a desperate return to the land?

Part of Norse legend, as envisioned by Richard Wagner in his Ring Cycle operas, was the idea of Gotterdammerrung, literally the twilight of the gods. The balance of the world is lost, the rope of the Fates is broken, and the gods themselves go up in flames. I can foresee an Elektronikdammerrung, a twilight of electronics, when humanity no longer has the necessary supply of energy and materials to make them or the prosperity to drive demand. The huge chip and transistor factories in Southeast Asia will go to ruins. Like history running backwards, electronics will devolve from mass consumer goods to luxury consumer goods, and then to the vaults of universities, military bases, and government agencies. Computers will be lovingly tended by teams of specialists. More prosaically, people will open store doors by hand and time their coffee with windup devices, communicating the everyday events of their lives with letters and the landline telephone.

Eventually, without our present widespread use and facing the time and energy demands of post-petroleum agrarian life, our descendants will be faced with the decision between parts for the mainframe computer and the wheat harvest. Given the complexity of manufacturing processors, perhaps the industry won’t sustain itself below a certain level of mass demand. A period of electronic cannibalism will ensue and run its course. One by one, the last lights of the computer age will wink out.

I’m not a modern Luddite. Let’s face it, this piece was written on a computer and you are reading this on my website. I like my electronics and rely on them for business, personal communication, and recreation. However, I do not make the historical mistake of thinking that the way we live today is the way we will live forever. Nor do I make the similar mistake of thinking that the path of our society is onward and upward forever. The graph of human history is a series of rising and falling lines, with civilizations increasing in complexity and demand on their environments until they collapse. It would be arrogant to assume that we are exempt from the laws of physics, biology, and geology. I used to enjoy a vision of our future as a secular version of the Amish, augmented by a veneer of electronics, as a best case scenario for a post-energy-glut world. I now have a rougher, sparer vision, formed by what I know about the limitations of our resources and our species itself. If we are careful our descendants will still have the knowledge we have gained in our period of technological bounty. Perhaps they will be able to use much of it with only (I shouldn’t say “only”) their minds and their hands.

Comments

[CKT]

The author is a proponent of "Olduvai Theory" (whether he is aware of it or not). Will the arc of our future path really be a mirror image of that which brought us here? Nah. The central argument of these "Return to the Stone Age" theories is the eventual exhaustion of non-renewable energy sources, as if nothing can or will be done to find alternatives. We are already well on a path to replacing our non-renewable energy sources and reforming our unsustainable energy usage with better sources and methods. 50 years from now, these prophesies of doom will sound quaint, much like our cold war ruminations that the only possibilities were A) World domination by the Soviets, or, B) nuclear armageddon. No, the energy will continue to flow, but what about the author's other fear, that the computers will develope self-awareness, ultra-intelligence and run amuck? Well, yes, I suppose that could happen, but I doubt it almost as much as the energy running out. If computers became that advanced and insightful, wouldn't they see the inheirent wisdom of peaceful coexistence? And besides, it's not as if we would sit passively on our hands while they try to swallow us whole. So listen, if you're determined to sit around the campfire swapping scary stories, forget about the energy running out or the computers taking over. Climate Chnage - now there's a scary story. And in the end, it might really get us.

[Minor Heretic]

CKT,

If you re-read the piece you will note that the supposed singularity is somebody else's dystopian idea, and not any fear of mine. Nor do I think that we will go back to stone knives and bearskins. I do think that the pervasiveness of semiconductor electronics will decline as we transition away from fossil fuels.

One of the basic and unpleasant truths of renewable energy is that inherently it will not allow us to live the way we do now. Cutler Cleveland writes quite coherently about the difference in energy concentration, quality, and return on energy investment between fossil fuels and renewables. Renewable energy is diffuse, intrinsically flow limited, and cyclical. It can't support the same level of global industrial activity that we now maintain by sucking a million years of stored sunlight out of the ground annually.

The present market in electronics is an interlocking relationship between first world prosperity based on unsustainable energy use, international shipping based on unsustainable energy use, semiconductor manufacturing based on unsustainable energy use, and sweat factory labor driven from farms by agribusiness based on unsustainable energy use. It can't go on forever.

And yes, I am worried about anthropogenic global heating.

[CKT]

Cutler Cleveland cannot foresee our technological capabilities decades from now any more than Edison could foresee fiber optics, but it’s a good bet our abilities will have advanced well beyond our current grasp. If we can invent ways to capture even a tiny fraction of the energy swirling all around us in the form of wind, waves and direct sunlight, our needs will be satisfied for centuries. Fossil fuels were the low-hanging fruit that was easy to acquire when we started to use bulk energy but there’s a sustainable supply of fruit higher up; we just have to learn how to get it. This process has already begun and is encumbered not so much by a lack of promise but by a lack of economic necessity, thus far. But when peak oil really begins to bite us hard, the incentives will come and so will the innovations.

You remark “The graph of human history is a series of rising and falling lines, with civilizations increasing in complexity and demand on their environments until they collapse”. This may be true of individual city-states or countries or cultures, but the whole of humankind has advanced dramatically from its hunter-gatherer roots and it is not unreasonable to conclude that it might continue in this way, despite the challenges. The Roman Empire is gone and so are the Pharaohs but have you seen Shanghai lately? Wow.

And why do you think that computers will be abandoned? Making the chips may take a fair amount of energy but they’ll be needed even more than today, not less. In a world with energy in short supply, an energy-sipping laptop with powerful capabilities becomes even more valuable for communicating without need for travel, as well as for sifting options and finding efficiencies.

The lights of the computer age will not wink out - they will shine with the light of innovations yet to be imagined. Of course there is something that will wink out, and that’s the popularity of this particular gloom and doom prophesy. Not to worry though, there will always be a new wave of defeatist prognostication just around the corner. But don’t buy it.

[Minor Heretic]

CKT,

You should read the work of Cutler Cleveland. The problems he addresses are not so much ones of technology as of physics and natural processes. Let me repeat: The problem with renewable energy is that it is cyclical and diffuse. All the technological advances in the world won't make sunlight more intense, eliminate night, or make the wind blow more steadily or intensely. Hydroelectric and geothermal power are the exceptions, but their potential is strictly limited by geography. The incredible flow of fossil energy out of the ground, unrestrained by the ordinary cycles of nature, has allowed us a temporary exemption from those cycles.

And note my concluding lines: "If we are careful our descendants will still have the knowledge we have gained in our period of technological bounty. Perhaps they will be able to use much of it with only (I shouldn’t say “only”) their minds and their hands." I don't see our descendants as ignorant. I don't see a computer-deprived future as gloomy. I don't see an energy limited future as a defeat. A new challenge? Perhaps, in certain ways, it would be better. There were only a handful of computers in the world in 1950, but people managed to live decent lives somehow. Hardly anybody had automobiles before the First World War, but they got on with life without them.