2014-02-20

The Singularity

Every now and then, the conversation resurfaces: when will The Singularity occur, and what will we do when it happens?

A basic question about it is, if only the most talented of us are worthy of power, money, and recognition, and if those things are directly related to quality of life, is it ever in our best interest to enable programs to become better at what we do than we are? Of course this hinges on what people define as talent and worth. In business, value is often determined by rarity of skillset, where rarity is diffused by the availability of less expensive alternatives.

It's an important question for technologists, because most of us have spent our careers writing clever scripts or programs to do the tedious parts of what we do. This cleverness has led to business leaders and opportunists to encourage this trend as a means to reduce that rarity and pay less for technologists, or to justify having fewer of them.

It's a familiar argument to Infosec folks: the magic bullet application that protects all things so businesses can cut expenses on headcount.

So, with this observation, I have a proposal.