Not just any meeting
27-28 September 2017
SingularityU Italy Summit – RHO
Singularity is a metaphor taken from physics by Ray Kurzweil, founder of Singularity University, to describe the technological process that will come to merge the human with technology. Therefore, the University of Singularity aims to prepare leaders to apply exponential technologies to respond adequately to the anthropological, social, ecological changes that the technologized world requires.
This is an objective that it is carrying out well of course, given that world leading transhumanist executives and researchers come out of it, and that some of them then join the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), one of the most important research universities in the world; the DARPA, a government agency of the US Department of Defence for the development of new military technology; Google; Microsoft, to name but a few…
Surely the fact that it is in Silicon Valley, on a piece of land of the NASA, and being partly financed by Google, is a further confirmation of how much the idea of the world it is proposing is shared with those who create and cause the conditions of the ecological and social disaster we find ourselves in. To this disaster then one would like to find a “solution”, putting something into it.
But there’s nothing to worry about! The thing seems to have been found and is an artificial and robotized thing. In fact through the use of technology is thought to be able to deal with what in this conference they call “the great challenges of humanity”: we are assured of the possibility of a radiant future. A future in response to the fear of death and the desire for immortality, promises of cures for diseases, the absorption of pollutants from the environment, the defeat of poverty and famine.
This fabulous prospect must, however, be bartered and the complete acceptance of this technologized world is being asked in exchange.
Declaring that they are responding to the desire for a better life free from suffering and limits, the transhumanists are planning an artificial, computerized, robotized, engineered and nano technological world.
But we mustn’t fall into this facile trap: more technology has not brought and will never bring more freedom and happiness but rather, it brings the exact opposite. These technologies, as a tool of power can only lead to the maintenance and growth of the latter and to an ever greater pervasiveness and manipulation of bodies. The singularity is not just the creation of super intelligent machines: it is above all the birth of a new totalitarian regime where humans dominate other living beings and the surrounding world by means of new technologies. A regime where the human being, now sure of being able to manipulate what surrounds him according to his needs, may imagine that they are free while chasing their dream of perfection, enhancing and deleting every physical boundary and limit to give birth to the Cyborg.
In this world, bodies, natural elements, are no longer an unavailable foundation but become usable, manipulable, improvable. The Singularity that is being promoted by these technoscientists does not correspond to uniqueness, the singularity of the individual, but to uniformity and homologation, fruit of technological development.
A techno-science guru has issued a warning to his disciples, which could be extended to opponents: “Don’t stay away in the face of Singularity, you have the possibility to manage your efforts at the point of greatest impact, the beginning.”
Let’s struggle against these processes and this techno-world, feel the urgency, before it’s too late.
“Ah, the dream of immortality, to have your own thoughts, dreams and personality impressed in the safety of silicone, clean and brilliant, instead of their current carbon body, with its tendency to rot. “- Armageddon, from Wild Earth No. 18, 2005.
Ecologist Assembly “Le Ortiche”
Wednesday, September 27
Gathering from 7 am to 2 pm
Hotel Avenue, south door of the Milan Fair – Rho [27 September, Rho-Milan]
