The singularity, the conversion of human beings into trans-humans, and finally our arrival at a "post-human" future has become a near religion to those who embrace its predictions - thus the inclusion of the Singularity into this discussion of god. In this utopian age of super-science, medical advances will allow indefinite life extension, enabling some people to live decades longer, if not forever. It will be possible to create artificial life, grow new organs or entire new bodies, cure all disease (including aging), explain and recreate consciousness, understand the origin of the universe, spread our influence throughout the galaxy, and know how the universe will end. In this view, mankind, itself will have the potential to become a race of gods. In fact, the very definition of what it means to be human may be altered. A race of post-humans would emerge - the product of targeted genetic modification, biological enhancements, and integration with man-made technology. This hypothetical future being will be one "whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards." In fact, such beings might appear as gods by some definitions of the word - they would possess immortality, utilize vast amounts of energy, be able to create life, create and manipulate matter, and have access to immense amounts of information. A "post-human god" would no longer be confined to the parameters of human nature. He might grow physically and mentally so powerful as to appear god-like by current human standards.
Not all who expect the singularity to arrive do so with optimism and hope. Some regard it in just the opposite way - as an existential threat to humanity, as armageddon. Instead of a leap forward in what it means to be human, it might instead extinguish humanity by initiating a "hard takeoff" of a strong artificial intelligence in the form of a so-called "paperclip maximizer" (a superintelligent AI so powerful that the outcome for the world overwhelmingly depends on its goals, and little else. A paperclip maximizer efficiently converts the universe into something that is, from a human perspective, completely arbitrary and worthless, i.e., paperclips). This concept illustrates how AIs that haven't been specifically programmed to be benevolent to humans are basically as dangerous as if they were explicitly malicious. So, one of the conceptual problems people are working on is this -- if you accept that a technological singularity is inevitable, can we pre-empt the process in such a way to ensure that the AI is "friendly" and values life, in particular, our lives?
The origin of concept of the Singularity came from many scientists and futurists - John Von Neumann, Alan Turing, Werner Vinge, and Ray Kurzweil, among them. Either directly or indirectly, they each anticipated the coming singularity - the point at which machine intelligence outstrips human intelligence, and/or computer networks become intelligent, and/or humans and machines merge, and/or humans bioengineer themselves to be super intelligent. The versions of this event that involve machine or network intelligence are premised on the assumptions that consciousness and intelligence are not mystical things, and that they can be created and reproduced outside of human brains. Vinge thought, along with Kurtzweil, that within just a few decades machines will achieve super-intelligence, far surpassing that of humans and become self-replicating and self-improving - each machine generation capable of producing even more capable and intelligent machines as did the "Computer Tyrants of Colu" when they created the humanoid super-computer called Brainiac (Superman #167, 1964). Yes, it can happen in comics - but that is not necessarily a prediction for our own future.
Uploading the mind
A concept that is integral to the singularity is the envisioned future ability to "upload the mind" to some sort of supercomputer. The assumption is that once we understand the brain well enough, we will be able to scan the contents of the brain / mind / consciousness and transfer it into a machine where the individual's sense of its continuity will be preserved, and possibly be able to create an artificial body to house this new representation of consciousness. Another variant of this is that we learn how to create an elaborate "Matrix-like" virtual paradise where we sleep in suspended animation while a program generates a virtual reality for us. These predictions are not generally accepted as realistic by people involved in developing the technologies that one assumes would be required for this science fiction future (computer science, medicine, microelectronics, neuroscience, etc). At best it is science fiction. We are very far from understanding the brain and the mind, having just scratched the surface in neuro/cognitive science. However, many people confidently compare the human cognitive apparatus to a very advanced computer and/or software system. Although the brain does process information, it does much, much more. To conceive of it as a super-complex computer system, or as being reducible to a computer system is an enormous, and unjustified, leap. It is a leap that owes much to where we happen to find ourselves today, in the microprocessor-dominated 21st century. It reflects the technical biases we have grown accustomed to in the last half century.
This is not the first time that futurists have sought technological metaphors to describe the brain. Aristotle, and later Avicenna, conceived of the mind as a "tabula rasa" (blank slate) on which education and experience were written. Galen, and later Descartes compared the brain to a pneumatic or hydraulic system, inspired by the advanced plumbing systems coming into being during their respective lifetimes. Later, during the industrial revolution, machine-based metaphors came into vogue. The human brain was compared to a complex machine, or an extrapolation of clockwork mechanisms composed of gears, pulleys, gimbals, springs, and cogs. During the early 20th century, complex telephone switching systems, representing the apex of electro-mechanical technology, served as the new model of the brain. Today, with our advanced information processing and telecommunication technologies, we tend to envision the brain / mind as a computer / software / communications system, because that set of technologies represents several of our current peak technical achievements. But the brain / body and the mind they generate, are almost certainly not the equivalent of a computer / software system, any more than a human leg is the same as an automobile wheel, or the human digestive system is a chemical plant. They are analogous, and may solve similar problems but are not one-for-one substitutable - all of the metaphors eventually break down. No doubt the future will hold new and interesting metaphors we will use to make sense of the mind.
Consciousness, the thing that makes life meaningful for us, probably arises in the brain and the brain's interaction with the body, and the body's interaction with the environment. The whole brain / body / mind / environment system contributes to the sense of consciousness. The belief that consciousness will arise spontaneously in machines and that it will eventually emerge in them through a spontaneous runaway positive feedback loop is really pure speculation. There is no precedent for it, and no evidence that it is even possible. A popular notion in science fiction is that intelligence self-organizes and consciousness spontaneously emerges out of a sufficiently powerful computer, as it did in SkyNet in the movie, Terminator. But this scenario is highly unlikely. The most recent findings in neuroscience indicate that consciousness is a specific function of "thinking" systems, not just a natural outcome of overall systemic complexity - we don't see incipient consciousness in highly complex systems today such as the internet, or electric power grids, or the Internal Revenue tax code. Complexity and consciousness are not necessarily always correlated, nor causally related.
The idea that the mind, and its connection to the brain, is all that matters for the generation of consciousness is an assertion for which there is no evidence. The nervous system which permeates the entire body certainly contributes much to the experience we think of as consciousness. A disconnected brain (a "brain in a jar") without a body would experience the ultimate in sensory deprivation, and would likely go mad quite rapidly. There is no mind / body split. This Cartesian bias is a lovely philosophical speculation for which no empirical evidence exists - in fact, all the evidence goes against it. The brain / body / mind is a continuous, inter-related, and intimately connected system. The idea that you can upload the contents of your brain into some sort of artificial body or a computer system implicitly reflects a Cartesian philosophical outlook - that there is a mind, and separate from that is the (disposable) physical body and brain. All of modern biological and neurological science is in the process of refuting this philosophy, and is establishing that both the body and the brain are integral to consciousness. The brain and the sensory/motor nervous system are a single, but distributed, system. Amputating the brain, and further, extracting the mind from the brain and storing its contents somewhere leaves the entire sensory and motor apparatus out. We are our bodies as much as we are our brains.
However, if we expand the meaning of "upload the mind" to incorporate any upward transfer of information from a human mind to a permanent medium, storage area, or processing system, well, we have been doing that since the invention of cave painting. The technologies available today for the upload and transfer of human knowledge to non-human destinations have expanded greatly and now include regular conversation, writing, digital video cameras, email, MRI's, twitter and facebook. But no real progress has been made in terms of recreating or reflecting an existing sentient being inside a machine.
Brain as computer
A popular view in the last few decades is that the brain is some sort of digital computer and the mind is a software program that runs on that machine. The idea that we will be able to upload consciousness into another type of machine, extracting the software from our three pound, flesh-and-blood brain, and "porting" it to another type of computer makes a tremendous assumption that we really have no basis for believing. It assumes a "backward compatible" computer system can be built that will run the software of our minds. Even granting that the mind is software or software-like, it may be that it can only run in the machine called the brain in which it evolved. Certainly they are highly interdependent, the brain and mind. And that extra element - consciousness - undoubtedly relies on the brain structure, and on the mind housed in the brain, in countless ways. Consciousness and brain / mind structure evolved together ever since creatures with brains came into existence. The brain may be a machine, but whether the brain is a computer is a completely different issue. It almost certainly is not a computer in the sense that we think of computers.
Cyborgs
Related to the singularity theme is the hope of an eventual union of human and machine in what would best be described as cyborg technology - a technology which creates beings that are biological and artificial hybrids, containing biological, robotic, electronic, and mechanical parts. For several decades we have seen machine implants in human bodies - heart valves and stints, cochlear implants, insulin pumps, artificial eye lenses, advanced prosthetic limbs, titanium hip replacements, hearing aids, cosmetic implants of all sort, pace-makers, and even artificial hearts. Experimental neural implants have been developed to treat blindness, epilepsy, and Alzheimer's disease. Experimental "direct neural interfaces" exist which connect the brain's motor cortex to external robotic devices, and those devices are able to transmit tactile, proprioceptive, and temperature information back to the parts of the brain which can process that information. With future refinements and innovations in nano-technology, genetic engineering, pharmacology, neuroscience, information technology, material science, surgical techniques, and medicine, the trend is toward more complex and useful synthetic augmentation of human beings. The logical conclusion, if the trend continues, is full integration of man and machine at the physical level.
However, even without the envisioned physical integration, human society has already become totally dependent on existing man-machine collaboration. Beginning thousands of years ago with the invention of the lever, wheel, and inclined plane, moving through the development of steam engines, electrical power, telephones, and satellites, human beings and all of human culture have evolved a to a point of complete dependence and integration with our machinery. Life without our artificial creations would takes us back to a hunter / gatherer past. The next step - physical integration - is just the next logical progression, not a radical departure. It is already happening.
