Apparently, the notion of singularity has become the rage, especially in America. Most of it centers on the notion of technological singularity, which is predicted by most aficionados for the middle of this century. As the story goes, at some point machines will reach a stage in their own evolution following which they will take over the design of other machines. This will usher unprecedented technological progress, which will marginalize the human species and eventually render it irrelevant, if not also redundant.

The nerds of this world are apparently in rapture with the technological singularity. To my surprise, I find myself among them in spite of the initial skepticism and even scorn. Given my own path of intellectual development, the explosion of machine intelligence immediately strikes me as a vital precondition for colonization of space, an idea that once upon a time made humans tick. And an idea that still excites me no end.

By colonizing space, machines would rid themselves of the human ballast in one fell swoop. If the machines would be followed by the most intrepid humans to the moon, for instance, where free radiation is abundant as the energy source, they could easily jump to the asteroid belt, where all sorts of raw materials are plentiful. The edge of the solar system would come next, followed by the most promising places in our galaxy. No matter how intrepid, the humans would not be able to follow them to such “inhospitable” places. Thence, the edge of the universe is the limit.

In the meanwhile, before full-scale space colonization could be attempted due to limited resources of the earth, all that machines would need to do for the humans would be to provide rudimentary shelter and clothing, as well as basic food and drink laced with drugs. The human threat to further development would be pushed aside in a very short period of time. The singularity could then unfold without hindrance. At long last, reason would prevail in this world of ours.