The cover of a recent issue of Time magazine astonishingly declares, "2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal." But the Bible tells a different story about living forever.
by John Ross Schroeder
If announcing human immortality weren't surprising enough, the cover
story of the Feb. 21, 2011, issue of Time also astonishes in how
that's envisioned. The article quotes a science-fiction novelist and
mathematics professor who told a NASA symposium in 1993 that "within
30 years, we will have the technological means to create super-human intelligence. Shortly
after, the human era will be ended" (quoted by Lev Grossman, "2045:
The Year Man Becomes Immortal," emphasis added throughout). While
that was stated 18 years ago, many still believe in such a future.
The article speaks further of advances in artificial intelligence leading
eventually to "smarter-than-human intelligences with which (with whom?)
we might one day share the planet" and considers various possibilities:
"Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs,
using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars
and planes extend our physical abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences
will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely.
Maybe we'll scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside
them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity
and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the
transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable
as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity."
The teaser for the article defines the Singularity, a term borrowed from
astrophysics, as "the moment when technological change becomes so
rapid and profound, it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history."
