OCT 3, 2011 - The Coming Technological Singularity is the defnitive essay by the man who created and defined the term; which term in turn defines the future, I suspect. I last addressed The Singularity in a WOW column earlier this year. Now that we're practically racing toward the next Trigonalis - the change of element of the Great Chronocrator (i.e. the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction), the time is growing short for us to think once more about the unthinkable, to wrap our minds around the coming event that will (perhaps literally) blow our minds. And who better to explain it than the man who defined it, Vernor Vinge? The Coming Technological Singularity spells it out, what happens when we humans create our own successors. Science fiction has explored the topic for decades, and Hollywood has spectacularly painted the pictures for us (e.g. The Terminator). I've been describing for years now, in my World Forecast Highlights, how the period between the 1980 mutation Jupiter-Saturn conjunction (the first air interloper in the earth sign series of these alignments) and the 2020 Trigonalis (the first in an unbroken air sign series of the conjunction) marked a temporal watershed between eras that would be as different as the Industrial Revolution was from the agrarian civlization the preceded it. We're heading into the home stretch. The Singularity approaches as the next Jupiter-Saturn conjunction draws closer, and The Coming Technological Singularity outlines what happens next. As for the details, I promise you this. It won't be The Terminator: I'm looking not for a bang, but more like a long drawn-out whimper.
