Редактирование: Transhumanist FAQ Version 3 (раздел)

===Won’t these developments take thousands or millions of years?===

It is often very hard to predict how long a certain technological development will take. The moon landing happened sooner than most people had expected, but fusion energy still eludes us after half a century of anticipation. The difficulty in forecasting the timing lies partly in the possibility of unexpected technical obstacles and partly in the fact that the rate of progress depends on levels of funding, which in turn depends on hard-to-predict economic and political factors. Therefore, while one can in many cases give good grounds for thinking that a technology will eventually be developed, one can usually only make informed guesses about how long it will take.

The vast majority of transhumanists think that superintelligence and nanotechnology will both be developed in less than a hundred years, and many predict that it will happen well within the first third of this century. (Some of the reasons for holding these opinions are outlined in the sections about these two technologies.) Once there is both nanotechnology and superintelligence, a very wide range of special applications will follow swiftly.

It would be possible to give a long list of examples where people in the past have solemnly declared that something was technologically absolutely impossible,

“The secrets of flight will not be mastered within our lifetime – not within a thousand years.” (Wilbur Wright, 1901),

or socially irrelevant,

“There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.” (Ken Olsen: President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977)

– only to see it happen few years later. However, one could give an equally long list of cases of predicted breakthroughs that failed to occur. The question cannot be settled by enumerating historical parallels.

A better strategy is to look directly at what a careful analysis of the underlying physical constraints and engineering constraints might reveal. In the case of the most crucial future technologies – superintelligence and molecular manufacturing – such analyses have been done. Many experts believe that these will likely be achieved within the first several decades of the 21st century. Other experts think it will take much longer. There seems to be more disagreement about the feasibility and time-frame of superintelligence than of nanotechnology.

Another way of forming a view of where we are headed is by looking at trends. At least since the late 19th century, science and technology, as measured by a wide range of indicators, have doubled about every 15 years (Price 1986). Extrapolating this exponential rate of progress, one is led to expect to see dramatic changes in the relatively near future. It would require an abrupt reversal of current trends, an unexpected deceleration, in order for the changes that many transhumanists foresee not to happen within the 21st century.

References:

The Foresight Institute. “Erroneous Predictions and Negative Comments Concerning Scientific and Technological Developments.” (2002). http://www.foresight.org/News/negativeComments.html

Price, D. J. Little Science, Big Science …and Beyond. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).