The Day of the Singularity

March 10 2011

It was a Tuesday when the Singularity occurred.

Dinah thought of her cousin, Hollis, who until recently had been a card-carrying member of the NRA and passionate advocate of gun ownership.

Hollis had seen it as a bulwark against government power, but as the Singularity approached he had recognized how absurd that was, that being a gun nut was just about being a gun nut, and that a nation of solitary gun owners hadn't posed a military threat to the state since at least the first A-bomb. No, people power had brought down the British Empire, had brought down apartheid from Johannesburg to Memphis, had brought down the Iron Curtain, and had brought down the dictatorships of South America and the Middle East, not a bunch of militia nuts with pop-guns.

As the Singularity approached, Hollis had realized his charade and then gone full circle, cheering every new advance in computational power, loading himself up with as many nanochips as he could find.

Within weeks, this flannel-wearing Luddite had transformed himself into a cyborg, his every thought sensed by the billions around the globe who had wired in.

Dinah thought about Hollis, and wondered if, on this day, he was happy. Surely, she thought, someone so lacking in self-awareness must be reveling in the moment. But then she reflected, and thought, perhaps not.

Even the most blindingly drunk New Years' Eve reveler spares a wistful thought for the year past, the time gone forever, the loss of youth.

"Yes," murmured Hollis.