Waaaagh!

So I'm reading commentary on White Chapel (a Warren place) on the subject of Singularity vs Global Warming... of how the tech develops, where it moves quickly, where it will happen regardless of how badly we murder the planet, etc... good thinking going on in this thread... but one post kinda hits it.

Now - prior to this on the page we get the beautifully phrased "And that's what interests me, and what I'm trying to get people to think and talk about, not Whuffie and having separate Twitter accounts for your prefrontal lobe and your lizard brain and cosplay dorks running around turning themselves into giant anthropomorphic squirrels and humping each other in a sad little augmented reality that looks like a cross between the forest of Arden and the first fucking level of Super Mario Brothers." - I swear - THIS is why I love SF people... This is why i've been tearing through the Stross and Watts libraries like there's no tomorrow... (i'm on Iron Sunrise right now)

Ok - so - a brief 'what the fuck is he talking about' and my take.

Singularity - a primer - (just read the first section if you're in a fucking hurry)

Ok. So suppose we go and boil the planet. We're on the way - it's going to happen. China opens a new coal generating electric plant every 2 days - and unless H5N1 hits HARD and takes a good 5-10% swat at humanity (normal numbers for global pandemics - we just havent had one in a while) - well - the planet just isnt going to be able to take it. So we screw it up. The wealthy live in domes - underwater... or underground... easy enough to do - easy enough to put in good filtration and appropriate populations etc - we can sort that out - and the tech can probably go repair the meta-genetic damage DDT did to our grandparents that we've inherited that's causing such massive down-generation problems in darwin's radio... but the singularity comes. We're too close - we'll get there on momentum unless there's something world cracking. Which means that hopefully - at least SOMETHING good will come from all this sex we've been having.