« The cost of First Click Free | Main | Googley treats for Goose Creek »

This post will self-destruct in five minutes

October 21, 2008

It was all very hush-hush. On Saturday, September 20, 2008, a carefully selected group of the tech world's best and brightest assembled in a windowless conference room at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley - barely a mile from the Googleplex as the rocket flies - to discuss preparations for our impending post-human future. This was the founding meeting of Singularity University, an academic institution whose mission, as founder Dr. Peter Diamandis told the elite audience, would be "to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies (bio, nano, info, etc); and to apply, focus and guide these to the best benefit of humanity and its environment."

Also speaking that day were Ames Research Center Director Dr. S. Pete Worden, inventor and chief singularitarian Dr. Ray Kurzweil, Google founder and co-president Larry Page, Dr. Aubrey de Grey of the Methuselah Foundation, Dr. Larry Smarr of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (his slides, misdated by a day, are here), Director of Cisco Systems Space and Intelligence Initiatives Rick Sanford, Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha of IBM's Cognitive Computing Group, leading nanotechnologist Dr. Ralph Merkle, and artificial intelligence impresarios Bruce Klein and Susan Fonseca-Klein. Among the few dozen in the audience were Second Life's Philip Rosedale, Powerset's Barney Pell, and Wired editor Chris Anderson.

A photograph of the group - it kind of looks like the New Age wing of the military-industrial complex - has found its way into my hands, but for God's sake don't tell anyone you saw it here:

The day after the meeting, IBM's Modha wrote a brief post about the event, but his words were quickly erased from his web site - not, however, before they were copied to the MindBroker site. "All in all," wrote Modha, "a weekend day well spent in company of brilliant and sincere people trying to make a positive impact on the world!"

Modha's post is one of the few public clues to the existence of Singularity University. (Another person who posted news of Singularity University was, he reports, "immediately contacted by people involved with the SU launch and asked [nicely and as a favor, nothing like cease and desist] to remove the post from the web archive, the reason being that the web sources quoted [not available anymore on the web, but still in Google cache and some blogs] had been posted without authorization and in breach of confidentiality.") Attendees of the Ames meeting were asked to keep their lips zipped: "The Singularity University founding meeting and the details around the Singularity University are being held confidential until a public announcement is officially made. Please do not discuss or share this information publicly. Thank you in advance for your cooperation." The last thing you want to do is frighten the humans.

Posted by nick at October 21, 2008 11:03 AM

Advertisement: Are you ready for "The Big Switch"? Nicholas Carr's new book "is the best read so far about the significance of the shift to cloud computing," says the Financial Times. Fast Company calls it "compulsively readable." Order now from Amazon.com.

Comments

Its remarkable to see that these bright minds are collaborating on some of the most consequential issues of our time. It would however, be more beneficial to hear commentary from the rest of us "humans". Or at least from some of the young scientists and researchers working on those very issues (as I myself, worked on nano).

Posted by: danreich at October 21, 2008 02:06 PM

The sooner that group above is hunted down and despatched to the island of "Lost" the safe humanity will be.

Posted by: Gerard Van der Leun at October 21, 2008 02:53 PM

That's an interesting list of people. Basically, big grant makers and big grant seekers.

Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at October 21, 2008 02:59 PM

Moses Znaimer was invited?

The man who brought Baby Blue Movies to Toronto is involved in the Singularity University.

Hmm, is a course on bonking on the agenda?

Posted by: michael webster at October 21, 2008 05:09 PM

Nick, only a group photo because they don't want people telling them - you looked so different 500 years ago :)

Posted by: vinnie mirchandani at October 21, 2008 05:14 PM

They're probably waiting to announce it at their annual Singularity Summit, which is this Saturday. Your list here looks a bit more mainstream than their typical speaker list, which is intriguing. I wonder what this university is all about.

I went to the Singularity Summit two years ago and liked it because they had a couple of high-profile skeptics (Douglas Hofstadter and Bill McKibben). The event hasn't looked quite as interesting since then, plus now they're charging big bucks.

Posted by: Kevin Arthur at October 21, 2008 07:13 PM

Conspicuously missing was Bill Why the future doesn't need us. Joy; wouldn't want to squelch all that food and wine driven optimism with a reality check. Love the picture with all those afro-American, native American and Polynesian faces! Is there a hidden agenda here? Call me a worry wart, but it reminds me of the Wannsee Conference, Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler CTO's design by committee meeting for the Holocaust Amazing what good food and drink can do for a meeting of minds!

Posted by: Linuxguru1968 at October 21, 2008 08:42 PM

The content of the whole singularity memeset being basically vacuous on its face and such people being literate and capable of simple deductions -- clearly the event is a tax dodge.

Are they really meeting just for the junket opportunity or why is anyone / who is interested in this particular group converging to talk about "other things"?

-t

Posted by: Tom Lord at October 21, 2008 09:42 PM

Yet further data to support the hypothesis that clever people in groups can be extraordinarily stupid. Groupthink at work, methinks; it all works as long as everyone thinks 'gee, these guys are clever, and I'm clever, so we must be on to something', makes sure that fundamentals to their arguments are outside their domain of expertise, and nobody challenges either assumptions or logic. (Hey, that sounds pretty good - where do I sign up?). I'd be worried if I thought anything would come of it...

Posted by: David Evans at October 22, 2008 04:33 AM

I think this old link addresses the question of Singularity in a way that might turn many off but it does address the question; does the spiritualization of technology point to the roots of Nick’s hypothesis that Google/technology is making us stupid.

Technocalyps: The fusion of utopian dreams and apocalyptic fears of the millennium.

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/new-version-of-technocalyps-is-out-six-theses-on-the-cyber-sacred/2006/05/31

Alan

Posted by: alan at October 22, 2008 09:26 AM

Why should we care for a bunch of people that consideres Chris Anderson a "clever" person?

Posted by: yocsilva at October 25, 2008 03:09 PM

This post will self-destruct in five minutes

October 21, 2008

Comments

Greatest hits

Other writing

Rough Type is: