Speaking of Singularities
Reading the word “Singularity” a bit too on Fedora Planet recently, and thinking aloud…
There exists an event-horizon point for any given open source project (should it succeed in reaching it) when it begins to move beyond the creators powers — and the person who creates it becomes essentially it’s babysitter (or guardian, if you will), and eventually it becomes more about what the project wants than what the author wanted. This is not immediately achievable, but further reinforces the idea of software becoming self-aware. Not in terms of it’s own bits, but in terms of the symbiotic human life that begins to cluster around it.
Thus, the beginnings of our proverbial SkyNet do not initially require AI — just purpose and willingness of those around the software to let the software take over. The people /really/ aren’t in charge, it’s the group consciousness the software is building around itself — and there are enough of them so that the software makes the right decisions even though the construct is half biological, half source code. The actual function of the code is not the function of the bits, but what the code makes the humans supporting it do to the code. It reproduces almost as though a quine — the existence of the idea makes the idea grow by getting symbiotic humans to go out and add to it.
Perhaps insane. Maybe, but in this vein — many projects exhibit the required criteria for life. We can learn more and achieve more when we know this. Imagine: Fedora is an anemonae. We are clownfish.
As I ponder what the overall end-game is for the free software movement, I think that’s it. Complete transformation of /everything/ into something completely different.
Without partnering with our software and treating it as if it were alive (and letting it of it’s cage to go for a walk) this can’t happen, it has to be pseudo-alive to become /really/ alive. Proprietary software has much more of a harder job to make the transition. The communities that build around software allow them to evolve in these ways and reap biological factors — including benefits from genetic exchange and exponential growth.
Thus it’s not the software that is actually self-aware, it’s more about thoughts being self-aware and bringing themselves into reality. Deep, no?
We’re still early, but if I’m right — software is already using humans, not the other way around.
