Singularity

Lev Grossman's article, 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal, makes the reader contemplate whether the growth of technology is good or bad. With how dependent we've become on technology, it it hard to think of it as a negative. It seems impossible that the world might be run by machines instead of humans one day, but that's the point Grossman is trying to make with "If computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence."  Are people starting to develop machines that will soon dominate life as we know it? So, this is the ultimate question: Are humans creating their rise and their downfall at the same time?
Grossman uses Raymond Kurzweil's invention as an example. When Kurzweil was just 17, he made an appearance on the game show called I've Got a Secret. After playing a special piece on the piano, the panelists guessed Kurzweil's hidden secret, the piece of music that he played was created by a unique computer that he made. This is where computers start to become "human". Some things, such as feelings, imagination, and creation, are what separate us from technology. Music is supposed to be something creative that can only be composed by someone putting their heart into it, but Kurzweil shows that computers are now able to do it as well. Kurzweil relates to Bernard in Brave New World. Bernard is intelligent enough to make his own predictions about the future. Bernard has a mind of his own and he doesn't succumb to the thoughts of others. For example, he states, "But wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way?"(Huxley 91). With all the machinery that the society in Brave New World is based on, you can tell that technology has taken over. It determines what they do, say, and even think. They have basically become computers themselves, which is what the article was about.
The predictions made by Grossman, Kurzweil, and Huxley might be right; They might be wrong. We'll just have to wait until 2045 to find out.