[ExI] [ieet] Singularity - Non-Gender Specific

[Damien Broderick]

On 9/29/2009 1:37 PM, natasha at natasha.cc wrote:

> the real (if there is such a thing) Singularity is not male-centric.
> Since this is the truth (if there is such a thing), why are its central
> advocates oblivious to this?  It seems that it would be more beneficial
> to be non-gender specific in its promotion.

Are you asking why more women are not currently discussing the 
singularity? Or why more women are not used as talking-heads in 
TV/webvid shows on the topic? Or why nobody has thought of inviting 
Jolie and Madonna (but not together) to the next Summit?

Since "the Singularity" is an abstract concept about rates of change in 
technology, I don't see how it can be *personalized* as either male or 
female, except in the figuration of Terminators or Gaiamind or some 
other comic-strip reductionism.

Consider science fiction a generation or two ago, when women were 
usually seen as excluded from the readership, the creative input, and 
the subject matter (except as "sexy" or domestic decoration); this was 
never really true, but it slowly changed to the point when now very many 
women write sf and a fair proportion of the readers are women. What 
caused this change? In part, education, feminism and the social 
readjustment of women's roles (made possible in part by oral 
contraceptives). With such changes now prevalent, despite the dickheads 
trying to push back the tide, it might be that the singularity idea will 
spread among women sooner or later if it becomes fashionable. When 
Malcolm Gladwell writes a book about it, and is hailed as a genius for 
"inventing" this great new idea (as Ray Kurzweil has already been, on a 
smaller scale), it'll be in the New Yorker and work its way down. Maybe.

Damien Broderick