Reason interviews Vernor Vinge
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Reason Magazine published a rather interesting interview with Vernor Vinge, touching on issues that interest libertarians. In regard to government control, or efforts to slow the Technological Singularity, he states:
There is a national interest, and not just in America, in providing the illusion of freedom for the millions of people who need to be happy and creative to make the economy go. Those people are more diverse and distributed and resourceful and even coordinated than any government.
That’s a power we already have in free markets. Computer networks, supporting data and social networks, give this trend an enormous boost. In the end that illusion of freedom may have to be more like the real thing than any society has ever achieved in the past, something that could satisfy a new kind of populism, a populism powered by deep knowledge, self-interest so broad as to reasonably be called tolerance, and an automatic, preternatural vigilance.
Short of physical disasters or failures in technology, Vinge believes the Singularity is inevitable. Barry Mahfood argues that it’s happening gradually…
