Things To Come: The Singularity October 18, 2009

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C Clarke

'Things to come: The Singularity' will bring you an evening full of imagery and debate about our technological future.

If computers become smart enough to design themselves, they could design smarter computers, which in turn would design even smarter computers. An explosion of artificial intelligence would be the result. This vision of the future, known as 'The Technological Singularity' is becoming more and more popular. Is this revolution really around the corner?
Or is it a paranoid dystopia, the horror scenario of human redundancy
fanned by movies like The Matrix?

Speakers:

According to Arjen Kamphuis, the development of technology accelerates enormously. As a futurologist for a strategic consulting bureau, he advises the government and large companies by conducting 'strategic future research' on these new technologies. This evening, he will discuss different scenarios that may lead us into singularity in the next twenty years.

John-Jules Meyer is a reputed professor of Artificial Intelligence at Utrecht University. He holds that developments will not go this fast and that intelligence is still harder to copy by computers than people think.

Dr. Merel Noorman, who is working for the Raad voor Maatschappelijke Ontwikkeling (Council of Social Development) and studied Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam and Science and Technology Studies at the University of Edinburgh, states that the interesting thing about the idea of singularity is not whether or not it is around the corner, but the fact that a host of different parties is using this idea by way of empowerment of their own agendas.

After their presentations, all speakers are invited for a public debate moderated by Klaas Kuitenbrouwer. He will lead the discussion about the kind of future we can anticipate, and the role left for us humans in this future.

This programme is curated by De Zondagsschool.

Official Website: http://www.impakt.nl/index.php/festival/things_to_come