The Big Idea

I've always heard the singularity defined as the point at which technological advancements occur so quickly no one can imagine the outcome. By that definition I do believe we've been in the singularity since about 2000 or 2001, whenever broadband Internet became widespread.

If you define the singularity as the time after super-intelligence, it still applies. If super-intelligence is an intelligence greater than one human, any online community would qualify. Social media systems like reddit, digg, youtube and twitter to name a few bring human awareness to a new level.

Take a look at what has happened over the last few years. I think the Ron Paul presidential campaign and the Campaign for Liberty are perfect examples of the unimagionable things that are beginning to occur. For example, raising 6 million dollars in a single day without centralized planning, creating an advertising company and funding it with half a million dollars to create and fly the Ron Paul Blimp, then there's HR1207...all decentralized events coordinated by software implemented super-human-intelligence.

I do believe we are on track to experience the hard take off in the next few years as people really begin to imagine new ways of using the Internet.

The 2012 presidential race will likely catalyze the widespread adoption of a new culture of mass collaboration, if other events don't do it first. Mass collaboration will bring new institutions into being. I imagine business like Walmart or Target being bought by online communities, coordinated buyouts by shareholders with an agenda. Just like people used the Internet to organize political campaigns, they'll do the same thing for business. Software will replace bloated corporate structures, and likewise bloated government beuarocracies.

Communities will fund the creation open source hardware and businesses to manufacture it. Imagine an open source printer with ink cartridges that cost $4. Soon it will be as easy for an online community to start a business as it is for an individual to start a blog.

Many business charge so much more for their products than the actual labor and goods that went into making them. They spend that money paying exorbitant salaries to people who don't really do anything, or at least nothing a community couldn't do for free. They spend it on marketing, something online communities do naturally... by default.

Consider money as electricity. Using the Internet, communities, cities, states, nations, will design the circuits which run our world.

The prosperity which this new culture will bring will unite the world. The huge defense budgets will be a thing of the past. Their arduous and undue burden will be lifted from society.

I believe we are part of the Universe. I believe that we are destined to spread to the stars and galaxies. I believe that without the culture which I have described we are destined to destroy ourselves.

I believe nature provided us religions so we could learn faith. I have faith in this.