The collapse of our current system is almost inevitable, what is crucial at that point is how the void that is left is filled.
It seems to me that most if not all of humanity's technological goals,the fulfillment of which is necessary to bringing about the Singularity, and our grand visions of the future demand a very large scale of collaboration and coordination between many organizations and humans. These are extremely complex goals, and I do not see them coming into fruition on the background of a collapsing civilization. This is why I would rather prefer a radical transformational process of our civilization instead of collapse. Such process must ensure that we are able to keep very high level of organization intact as a critical enabling factor for the Singularity. The future of human civilization is embedded in an ever increasing complexity. I do not believe that destruction and collapse are necessary conditions to a new emergence. Local collapses and chaotic events are of course inevitable, being the landmarks of any paradigm shift. Yet, beyond a certain threshold chaos will breed just more chaos and not a more interesting and complex order. I cannot see a massive technological progress taking place while major economical and organizational structures are collapsing.
sjef wrote:
It seems to me that most if not all of humanity's technological goals,the fulfillment of which is necessary to bringing about the Singularity, and our grand visions of the future demand a very large scale of collaboration and coordination between many organizations and humans. These are extremely complex goals, and I do not see them coming into fruition on the background of a collapsing civilization. This is why I would rather prefer a radical transformational process of our civilization instead of collapse. Such process must ensure that we are able to keep very high level of organization intact as a critical enabling factor for the Singularity. The future of human civilization is embedded in an ever increasing complexity. I do not believe that destruction and collapse are necessary conditions to a new emergence. Local collapses and chaotic events are of course inevitable, being the landmarks of any paradigm shift. Yet, beyond a certain threshold chaos will breed just more chaos and not a more interesting and complex order. I cannot see a massive technological progress taking place while major economical and organizational structures are collapsing.