The canyon and the singularity

I've been reading the Meaning of the 21st Century by James Martin. Being a 'realistic' future vision, it discusses and explains many of the old familiars:- soil erosion, world population growth, climate change, genetic engineering and nanotechnology. This will be news if you've never read a 'futures' book before, don't remember school geography and/or would be too embarrassed to loiter in the science fiction section of Borders.

If you have, then I'd recommend this book anyway. Why?

First, it was the first time I'd read about fourth generation 'pebble bed' nuclear reactors. These have the potential to be small, mass-produced and automatically shutdown before they lose containment. In theory, they address some of the concerns about nuclear energy raised by David Howarth MP during a talk I attended late last year in Cambridge. He was concerned that large nuclear reactors would force the UK's electricity to continue to be provided by a centralised grid, excluding microgeneration from the energy mix and incurring maybe a 20% energy loss during transportation between the power station and user. In addition, large conventional reactors tend to have a place-specific design that imposes a high 'first-build' cost. Mass producing small pebble beds would avoid these problems.

Second, his overarching thesis is relatively original even if the individual technologies are not. He claims that today's teenagers, the 'Transition Generation', will have to successfully pass through a 'canyon' of rising environmental problems. If humanity fails to pass through the 'canyon' and create a sustainable society, we will return to a dark age. If we succeed, we will hit the 'singularity', a concept familiar to anyone who has read 'Singularity Sky' or 'Iron Sunrise' by Charles Stross. James Martin (and Charles Stross) identify a macrotrend of accelerating increases in computer power where computer power is a proxy for the ability to manipulate 'bits' of information, non-biological or biological. The 'singularity' is the area on the technological growth curve at which the gradient of the trend line tends to infinity (illustration included for the non-mathmos amongst you). The singularity would be driven by self-evolving computers and other technologies that would develop without direct human input. James Martin's contribution seems to be fleshing out the moments before the singularity; he stops just beyond the canyon. Charles Stross and other science fiction writers imagine the possibilities of a society someway beyond the singularity.