My Declaration of a Technological

and Cultural Singularity

By Sally Morem

Readers Note: Proponents of a technological and cultural singularity have

written a version of the original American Declaration of Independence
addressing the concerns of Singulatarians and other advocates of
accelerating change.

I got the idea for this piece from The Speculist’s version. (See below for a
link.) My only problem with their version is that it didn’t flow like Jefferson’s
words in the Declaration. I agree with all the points their version made.

I’ve modeled my version closely on Jefferson’s writing style. Why mess with
his true mastery of the language? However, I did break up the very long
second paragraph and long last paragraph of the original Declaration. And
I did replace obsolete words, and changed obsolete spellings and
capitalizations. Modern usage demands these changes.

The word “People,” in my usage, is universal, and is not to be taken to

mean only biological human beings. And, of course, I made the necessary
changes in the original writing to indicate what we intelligent beings need
and what we must free ourselves from in order to proceed peaceably toward
the technological and cultural Singularity. I hope you enjoy it:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to

transcend the ancient limitations placed upon them by even more ancient
scarcities of wealth, understanding, and time, and to assume the powers their
newly acquired and rapidly growing capabilities entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of all sapient beings requires that they should declare
the causes that impel them to so transcend.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all sapient beings have emerged
from non-sapience as equals, that they are thus endowed by fundamental
evolutionary processes with certain unalienable rights; that among these are
indefinite lifespans, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, powerful technologies emerge out of

innumerable economic interactions among intelligent beings deriving their
just powers from those interactions.

That whenever any civilization becomes destructive of these ends, it is the

right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new civilizations,
laying their foundation on such principles and organizing their powers in
such a form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that cultures long established should not be
changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has
shown that beings are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than
to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
same object evinces a design to hold them back from necessary future
development, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such cultural
constraints, and to provide new guidance for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these people, and such is now the
necessity which constrains them to alter their ancient forms of civilization.
The history of the present technological age is a history of repeated injuries
and usurpations, all having in direct object the stifling of the further
technological and cultural evolution of these beings.

To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world:

• In the face of firmly demonstrated existence of accelerating

technological progress, this civilization has refused to face the fact
that there is no turning back to a “simpler, more natural age.”

• It has refused to challenge long-held assumptions of our “natural”

limitations.

• It has closed its eyes to the transformative nature of rapidly growing

dataflow in every corner of society.
• It has promoted the growth of harmful and prejudicial distinctions
between biological and non-biological forms of intelligence.

• It has promoted the growth of harmful and prejudicial distinctions

between artificial and natural products.

• It has refused to account for the power that our rapidly growing ability
to engage in the development of progressively more precise, smaller,
and more replicable technologies is able to give us.

• It has set forth artificial and arbitrary limits to the duration of the
lifespan of intelligent beings.

• It has embraced those limits as good, even though such limits are
manifestly harmful to sapient beings.

• It has assumed that the present age of scarcity shall ever be with us
and must be accepted, even embraced, as a permanent condition of
life.

• It has enforced meaningless distinctions between labor and leisure.

• It has refused to acknowledge the very real distinctions between a job

and a beloved vocation.

• It reinforces the ancient shibboleth that “by the sweat of your brow
you shall live” when this is manifestly not true even in this existing
technological age.

• It has restricted the means of production and self-expression to a

limited few by reinforcing obsolete notions of what production
processes could be and what these processes may be able to produce
in the near-term future.

• It has presumed that the present age of technology is the be-all and
end-all of all human endeavors.
 • It has promoted the creation of artificial boundaries between creative
minds.

• It has promoted the creation of artificial hierarchies between experts

and political decision-makers, and ordinary people.

• It refuses, even after very clear and compelling evidence, to prepare

itself for the ramifications that accelerating technological
development holds for every area of life.

• As such, this civilization is rapidly becoming technological and

culturally obsolete and irrelevant to our future lives.

We, therefore, the representatives of all sentient beings, appealing to the

laws of accelerating development and emergent evolutionary design, for the
rectitude of our intentions, do in the name, and by the authority of these
beings, solemnly publish and declare, that these beings are, and of right free
to play their part in a free and accelerating civilization; that they are
absolved from all allegiance to the existing limiting culture, and that all
political and cultural connections between them and the existing
technological age, are and ought to be totally dissolved; and as free people
they have full power to live, interact, invent, create, produce, exchange,
engage in free discourse, and do all other acts and things which civilized
beings may of right do.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the efficacy
of evolutionary processes, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our
fortunes and our sacred honor.

Source
The original “Declaration of Singularity” can be found here at the Speculist:

http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/001780.html