About That Singularity

I think the entire metaphor of technological progress as inevitable #Singularity should be questioned.  Just apply some basic knowledge about the thing you're trying to map to in making the comparison.

• If only the smallest fraction of stars go to black holes -- ie, form singularities -- why does our technology have to be heading that way?
• What is the cultural equivalent of going nova, and becoming a pulsar?
• The sun, the only star that we know for a fact has been able to support life, won't create a singularity at the end of its existence.
• Black holes destroy everything that moves past the event horizon, crushing the very possibility of life before you can reach the singularity.

Yet this is the metaphor we unreflexively use for the trajectory of technology and its relationship with life.  Not only does the language choice show our culture to be callous; it also shows it to be careless with the terms, perhaps even scientifically illiterate.