30 References to Singularity Before 1990

This is the bibliography of Dr. Vernor Vinge's essay "The Coming Technological Singularity"

    [1] Alfvén, Hannes, writing as Olof Johanneson, _The End of Man?_,
           Award Books, 1969 earlier published as "The Tale of the Big
           Computer", Coward-McCann, translated from a book copyright 1966
           Albert Bonniers Forlag AB with English translation copyright 1966
           by Victor Gollanz, Ltd.

    [2] Anderson, Poul, "Kings Who Die", _If_, March 1962, p8-36.
           Reprinted in _Seven Conquests_, Poul Anderson, MacMillan Co., 1969.

    [3] Barrow, John D. and Frank J. Tipler, _The Anthropic Cosmological
           Principle_, Oxford University Press, 1986.

    [4] Bear, Greg, "Blood Music", _Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact_,
           June, 1983. Expanded into the novel _Blood Music_, Morrow, 1985

    [5] Cairns-Smith, A. G., _Seven Clues to the Origin of Life_, Cambridge
           University Press, 1985.

    [6] Conrad, Michael _et al._, "Towards an Artificial Brain",
           _BioSystems_, vol23, pp175-218, 1989.

    [7] Drexler, K. Eric, _Engines of Creation_, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986.

    [8] Dyson, Freeman, _Infinite in All Directions_, Harper && Row, 1988.

    [9] Dyson, Freeman, "Physics and Biology in an Open Universe", _Review
           of Modern Physics_, vol 51, pp447-460, 1979.

   [10] Good, I. J., "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent
           Machine", in _Advances in Computers_, vol 6, Franz L. Alt and
           Morris Rubinoff, eds, pp31-88, 1965, Academic Press.

   [11] Good, I. J., [Help! I can't find the source of Good's Meta-Golden
           Rule, though I have the clear recollection of hearing about it
           sometime in the 1960s. Through the help of the net, I have found
           pointers to a number of related items. G. Harry Stine and Andrew
           Haley have written about metalaw as it might relate to
           extraterrestrials: G. Harry Stine, "How to Get along with
           Extraterrestrials ... or Your Neighbor", _Analog Science Fact-
           Science Fiction_, February, 1980, p39-47.]
          
   [12] Herbert, Frank, _Dune_, Berkley Books, 1985. However, this novel was
           serialized in _Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact_ in the 1960s.

   [13] Kovacs, G. T. A. _et al._, "Regeneration Microelectrode Array for
           Peripheral Nerve Recording and Stimulation", _IEEE Transactions
           on Biomedical Engineering_, v 39, n 9, pp 893-902.

   [14] Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan, _Microcosmos, Four Billion Years of
           Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors_, Summit Books, 1986.

   [15] Minsky, Marvin, _Society of Mind_, Simon and Schuster, 1985.

   [16] Moravec, Hans, _Mind Children_, Harvard University Press, 1988.

   [17] Niven, Larry, "The Ethics of Madness", _If_, April 1967, pp82-108.
           Reprinted in _Neutron Star_, Larry Niven, Ballantine Books, 1968.

   [18] Penrose, R., _The Emperor's New Mind_, Oxford University Press, 1989.

   [19] Platt, Charles, Private Communication.

   [20] Rasmussen, S. _et al._, "Computational Connectionism within Neurons:
           a Model of Cytoskeletal Automata Subserving Neural Networks", in
           _Emergent Computation_, Stephanie Forrest, ed., p428-449, MIT
           Press, 1991.

   [21] Searle, John R., "Minds, Brains, and Programs", in _The Behavioral and
           Brain Sciences_, v.3, Cambridge University Press, 1980. The
           essay is reprinted in _The Mind's I_, edited by Douglas R.
           Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, Basic Books, 1981. This
           reprinting contains an excellent critique of the Searle essay.

   [22] Sims, Karl, "Interactive Evolution of Dynamical Systems", Thinking
           Machines Corporation, Technical Report Series (published in _Toward
           a Practice of Autonomous Systems: Proceedings of the First European
           Cnference on Artificial Life_, Paris, MIT Press, December 1991.

   [23] Stapledon, Olaf, _The Starmaker_, Berkley Books, 1961 (but from
           the forward probably written before 1937).

   [24] Stent, Gunther S., _The Coming of the Golden Age: A View of the End
           of Progress_, The Natural History Press, 1969.

   [25] Swanwick Michael, _Vacuum Flowers_, serialized in _Isaac Asimov's
           Science Fiction Magazine_, December(?) 1986 - February 1987.
           Republished by Ace Books, 1988.

   [26] Thearling, Kurt, "How We Will Build a Machine that Thinks", a workshop
           at Thinking Machines Corporation. Personal Communication.

   [27] Ulam, S., Tribute to John von Neumann, _Bulletin of the American
           Mathematical Society_, vol 64, nr 3, part 2, May, 1958, p1-49.

   [28] Vinge, Vernor, "Bookworm, Run!", _Analog_, March 1966, pp8-40.
           Reprinted in _True Names and Other Dangers_, Vernor Vinge, Baen
           Books, 1987.

   [29] Vinge, Vernor, "True Names", _Binary Star Number 5_, Dell, 1981.
           Reprinted in _True Names and Other Dangers_, Vernor Vinge, Baen
           Books, 1987.

   [30] Vinge, Vernor, First Word, _Omni_, January 1983, p10.

Couilles Platine

Balls of fucking russian steel. I would like to propose a nomination of the acerbic kind, like biting at your throat with a russian dog with russian black boots. The award for the man who has said fuck to a lot of things that most of us wouldn't - the kinds of things that only happen in a Woody Allen or Herzog movie. Something so funny and metal balled.

Russia Adopts Blustery Tone Set By Envoy

Let's break this sentence DOOOOOOOAAAOOWWWWWWNN.

1) Russia - You know they're going to start big, starting the sentence with Russia just puts up that Iron Curtain on your spine, so your whole body just gets heavier and you sink into that broken old lady hunch that just feels so Russian.

2) Adopts - Adopts... this is the least harmful of the words. It could mean that they didn't start off with this tone, or maybe there was no tone to begin with, but it's an interesting and very business-like word to describe the change in Russia's voice over the recent Conflict.

3) Blustery - This means that the envoy interviewed (oh FUCK YEAH) was drunk as SHIT, and not even on vodka. He was probably drinking straight isopropyl or cough syrup laced with apricot schnopps.

4) Tone - There couldn't have been many other words used, but Tone gets a good point across that the recent attitude of the russians is going to stay for a bit. I find Tone to be this abstract thing that could just go whrhrrhrhrhhrhrhrh forever.

5) Set - this is the cement of both the Tone and the Envoy. It's trying to lay blame on this one man, but the Tone, it seems, has been set, literally, to be a long standing attitude by the Russians.

6) By - this is simply a preposition

7) Envoy - This alludes to a couple of things. First, most envoys (especially from Russia) are quite respected diplomats. It is a huge whatever to be an envoy, with an ambassadorial aura, and for someone in such an official position as This Guy:

(Thanks getty images!)

So the new cold war? I don't think that either country (US or Russia) want to lose the money. What stopped this most recent war was the crashing Russian stock market, and the hemorrhaging of foreign capital out of the state. This is more of What Happens after any country is humiliated but later becomes rich off of something. And Russia is rich as shit. I know that nobody reads this, but Russia is rich as shit!

They're so fucking crazy rich, and people in russia have just gotten so rich overnight that we now have to deal with a bunch of crazy russians who have worse taste than the Jackelopes of Jersey Fucking City.

So, not only do we have to deal with a bunch of Jagons from Russia beating their meat with and Iron Fist, but we also have to deal with the kitschiest billionaires EVERRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

WRRRAHOAOAOAOHAOHROHAHOROHAROHAOHRHOOHARHOROHHOROHROHROHROHOHROHAOHWWWWWW

(zizek) taken without permission from lacan.com :: re: the achilles heel of adbusters

So where do we stand today with regard to communism? The first step is to admit that the solution is not to limit the market and private property by direct interventions of the State and state ownership. The domain of State itself is also in its own way "private": private in the precise Kantian sense of the "private use of Reason" in State administrative and ideological apparatuses:

"The public use of one's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men. The private use of one's reason, on the other hand, may often be very narrowly restricted without particularly hindering the progress of enlightenment. By public use of one's reason I understand the use which a person makes of it as a scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him."

What one should add here, moving beyond Kant, is that there is a privileged social group which, on account of its lacking a determinate place in the "private" order of social hierarchy, directly stands for universality: it is only the reference to those Excluded, to those who dwell in the blanks of the State space, that enables true universality. There is nothing more "private" than a State community which perceives the Excluded as a threat and worries how to keep the Excluded at a proper distance. In other words, in the series of the four antagonisms, the one between the Included and the Excluded is the crucial one, the point of reference for the others; without it, all others lose their subversive edge: ecology turns into a "problem of sustainable development," intellectual property into a "complex legal challenge," biogenetics into an "ethical" issue. One can sincerely fight for ecology, defend a broader notion of intellectual property, oppose the copyrighting of genes, while not questioning the antagonism between the Included and the Excluded - even more, one can even formulate some of these struggles in the terms of the Included threatened by the polluting Excluded. In this way, we get no true universality, only "private" concerns in the Kantian sense of the term. Corporations like Whole Foods and Starbucks continue to enjoy favor among liberals even though they both engage in anti-union activities; the trick is that they sell products that contain the claim of being politically progressive acts in and of themselves. One buys coffee made with beans bought at above fair-market value, one drives a hybrid vehicle, one buys from companies that provide good benefits for their customers (according to the corporation's own standards), etc. Political action and consumption become fully merged. In short, without the antagonism between the Included and the Excluded, we may well find ourselves in a world in which Bill Gates is the greatest humanitarian fighting against poverty and diseases, and Rupert Murdoch the greatest environmentalist mobilizing hundreds of millions through his media empire.