Singularity Summit 2008 Reviewed

Description

Singularity Hub is proud to deliver the web’s most comprehensive coverage and analysis of the Singularity Summit 2008. The Singularity Summit is the premier annual event for those that are interested in the singularity. Below you will find our high level summary, followed by a link to a much more detailed description with pictures.

On Saturday October 25, 2008 I attended the Singularity Summit at the Montgomery Theatre in San Jose, CA. An impressive lineup of speakers, including Ray Kurzweil (de facto singularity advocate), Peter Diamandis (Founder/Chairman of Xprize Foundation), Vernor Vinge (famous science fiction author), and Justin Rattner (CTO of Intel) were on showcase for the roughly 500 attendees. The summit was thought provoking, inspiring, and overall a success.

The summit began promptly at 9:00am and continued throughout the day until 6:00pm with a few breaks in between and a one and a half hour lunch break. Here are the Hub’s major takeaways from the event:

1. When people become believers in a near term singularity (a singularity that may come in their lifetimes) they radically change their behavior in terms of risk tolerance, eating habits, and investment horizon. If large numbers of people begin to believe in a near term singularity this poses the possibility of enormous and potentially dangerous upheavals for society.

2. Even if a true singularity is not reached within our lifetimes the singularity summit reinforces the vision that tremendous technological change beyond our imagining is coming in the next 40 years. In the next 5 years an explosion in interest about the singularity and the pace of accelerating technology may occur.

Original URL

http://singularityhub.com/2008/11/02/singularity-summit-2008-reviewed/

http://singularityhub.com/2008/11/02/singularity-summit-2008-reviewed/