Infinite Lock-In, part 6

What Microsoft Windows, traffic lights, and gas-powered cars tell us about technological paradigms.

At the end of my previous reflection, I proposed a thought experiment in which the Singularitarians had their way: advances in technology gave us the ability to plumb, map, translate, and digitize the human mind. Then, I posed some questions:

What do Kurzweil and his cybernetic totalist ilk propose to do about the fact — not a hypothesis but a proven fact — that people’s minds form in various ways? That people experience reality via different paradigms which emerge from how their minds form? That there is no default paradigm which typifies all human beings? That, even if you can model the mind, no model can truly represent all minds?

What do they do about the fact that human beings are unique individuals, that each human mind is somehow singular, that each person’s experience of reality is in some way a singular dream?

Do they think we should just let go of that? Give it up?

I don’t mean to leave my point half-proven. So, in this reflection, let’s take a look at technological paradigms. In the next reflection, “The Luddite’s Tale,” I’ll tell you my own story about adapting to new paradigms.

Thereafter, we’ll ask what the triumph of paradigms might mean in the context of a technological singularity. And then we’ll see some of cybernetic totalism’s terrifying potential outcomes start to take shape.

Triumph of Paradigms

If you’re a typical computer user, not some tech geek, then when you move from one application to another, you don’t have to reboot your computer, much less install a new operating system. You don’t even have to close the first app. If you use Windows, you no longer even have to minimize one app before you can open another. You can run multiple apps at once, and you can just tab from, say, your word processor to your Internet browser. Windows, the operating system, is the single paradigm in which both programs work, as well as a slew of others, even simultaneously.

Well, what do you think of turning back the clock on computers to a time before operating systems could do this? To a time — I’m thinking of running programs on my Commodore 64 when I was a kid — when you had to close one program entirely before you could open another? When you couldn’t copy-and-paste data from one program to another, when you had to print it up and retype it? When, after closing one program, you might even have to reboot the computer to get another program to run properly?