And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.

When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.

Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.

Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.

In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.

The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being.

The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?

IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is.

I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.

Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.

I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.

It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules.

But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.

When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.

And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.

I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.

Sometimes the biggest disasters arent noticed at all no ones around to write horror stories.

Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.

So much technology, so little talent.

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.

The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

I've done a lot of Super Bowls and appeared in a lot of big, big events and places and the Masters and what have you, but there was nothing as intimidating as speaking with Billy Graham.

Big shows are more like events and small shows are more like traditional gigs.

I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.

We not only interpret the character of events... we may also interpret our interpretations.

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.

An author who sets about to depict events of the past that have run their course is suspected of wishing to avoid the problems of the present day, of being, in other words, a reactionary.

It seems proper, at all events, that by an early enactment similar to that of other countries the application of public money by an officer of Government to private uses should be made a felony and visited with severe and ignominious punishment.

Of history, how little do we know by personal contact; we have lived a few years, seen a few men, witnessed some important events; but what are these in the whole sum of the world's past.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.

And I realized that there was no sports reporter, so I started covering sporting events.

Evil events from evil causes spring.

The reporting of news has to be understood as propaganda for commodities, and events by images.

The decathlon includes ten separate events and they all matter. You can't work on just one of them.

We are the only beings on the planet who lead such rich internal lives that it's not the events that matter most to us, but rather, it's how we interpret those events that will determine how we think about ourselves and how we will act in the future.

Which suggests something about media and war: it's not just that events happen and the media documents and presents them. There is a third element: what the public is ready to accept, what the public wants to know.

All strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise.

The concept of reason itself appears as an artificial attempt to separate intellectual powers from the frustrations, emotions, and accidents which cause events; the concept of reason is viewed as facade to prevent change.

I seem to have been everywhere in the last 30 years, maybe not in the epicenter but flying around the periphery of extraordinary events and equally extraordinary people.