[MD] The singularity is near

[Laycock, Jos (OSPT)]

Dear all, 
It's been a while, I hope a few of you remember me!

I recently came accross the writings of the Ray Kurzweil, who I realise can
be a potential ally in softening academic/public opinion in favour of the
MOQ. 
For any that don't know he seems to be a computer scientist/futureologist,
obsessed with exponential trends in technological development. In the
prologue to the book above, he describes himself as a "patterninst" and my
ears prick up.

Further on he asserts that teccnology accelerating in line with current
exponential trends will result in a point where all matter is sequestered
for computational capacity, and all intelligence becomes unified. (grand
oversimplification by me - go read some of his stuff, its quite "good")

Within the course of his various proofs for this he implies that his
research predicts there to be consistent, universally applicable data type
underlying all things and that this will become apparent to the emergent
super-intelligence. Now this to me is a perfect description of the MOQ
enlightenment, and what we have here is an apparent materialist who has come
over alltogether Zen, and denies that there is any inherent divide between
subjects and objects! 
When I re-read SODV for the umpteenth time I realised that Pirsig equates a
similar description of data to values, in his attempt to show a softened,
skeptic-freindly, MOQ to the conference, but here it is arrived at
independently.

So a quick look at matey's extensive websites and a sift of the message
boards, does bring up references to Pirsig, but they just dont see it, a
link was suggested  but roundly shouted out of court by the cultural immune
system. All involved are computer geeks (appologies to any present) who are
much more interested in computer programming and basically got pissed off at
the suggestion that there could be any mystic component to any of the work
to which they were contributing.

Anyone else read any of this stuff?


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