I’m intrigued by the idea of the singularity. Given the exponential rate of technological change over the last four decades (a concept known as Moore’s law), who can predict the radical and unexpected ways that technology will change us in the next few years.

The idea of the singularity, that technological advance will proceed at such a pace we will soon have computers with “super intelligences” that will surpass our own, has appeal to many. As Jaron Lanier notes in his recent book, many who subscribe to this view believe that:

Computers will soon get so big and fast and the net so rich with information that people will be obsolete, either left behind like the characters in Rapture novels or subsumed into some cyber-superhuman something.

Lanier goes on to make the case that “We are Not Gadgets.” No “geek rapture” is imminent because information is inert without an intersubjective process of experiencing information. Computers cannot become smart enough to approximate inter-subjective feeling. He cautions us not to “deify information” and to look to “double down” on our own humanity.

But perhaps it’s our humanity that makes technology fraught with social challenges. The question for me is how we accomplish this process of preserving our humanity in the face of rapid technological change? As far as social media is concerned, I don’t entirely agree with Lanier’s view of technology as depersonalilzing us. I think it makes us hyperpersonal by further enveloping us in a world of personal feelings and subjective impresstions. I see the great challenge for humanity as technology develops is to learn the skill of standing outside of our own subjective milleu to see the “world out there.”

Sherry Turkle calls technology the “architect of our intimacies. What she fears is that technology will become so good at giving us that intimacy that we’ll come to see it as an extension of ourselves. As she notes in interviews she did with young people:

Teenagers tell me they sleep with their cell phone, and even when it isn’t on their person, when it has been banished to the school locker, for instance, they know when their phone is vibrating. The technology has become like a phantom limb, it is so much a part of them.

The personalization of technology isn’t because we deify it, it is because it caters to our vain sense of the preferability of our personal experience. If the machines rule us, it is because they flattered us with the possibility of ending loneliness and psychic want. The price may be the loss of spontaneity, contingency and the prospect of amassing wisdom from diverse experience.