John Smart
founder of the Acceleration Studies Foundation
kicked things off by talking about
the future, and future studies. This entire conference is
presenting a multidisciplinary view of the future, and the effects of
acceleration caused by the technological revolution. John primed
the pump with some interesting comments, and a quick review of the
speakers.

He then introduced the first speaker … someone who I have wanted to
hear speak for quite some time … Vernor Vinge. Vernor is given
credit for first using the term the “technological singularity”.
He immediately jumped into his presentation … the slides are here: Vernor Vinge @ AC2005

It was fun to hear his line of thinking about the Singularity, and
various types of growth curves. His slides contain a good set of
quotes and thoughts about possibility. What is so great is to
hear a speaker like this talking about the future, and some of the
inevitable future events … the development of creativity and intellect that surpasses present-day humans,
this *is* the Singularity … and the future of being human will evolve
into whole new dimensions. He talks about direct neural hook ups
of computers as inevitable in a way that makes you realize this is not
a question of if … but when.

He spent some time talking about the soft takeoff vs. hard takeoff scenarios. As he discussed soft takeoffs he highly recommended Accelerando as a great book exploring “soft takeoffs” as one possible scenario.   Amazing stuff.  He is a big thinker.