Max Borders

Well, I can't be sore about this -- I kind of knew what I was getting myself into reading a book on futurism, especially one that declares itself to be a "manifesto." The arguments are not always entirely careful or very detailed, but the central ideas are at least intriguing.

The titular "social singularity" is (as near as I can tell) a projected moment in a possible human future in which our ability to connect with each other and to organize our efforts toward the creation and maintenance show more of a valued social reality, becomes a dominant force. At that moment, the need for centralized, hierarchical social control falls away to be replaced by rule-based, iterative forms of emergent, localized social cohesion. There certainly is evidence that such social organization takes place, to good effect, on a small scale, but this book asks readers to consider what such emergent social cohesion would look like on a larger scale, replacing institutions like The Economy, The Government, and The Law. As one might expect with a book like this, there is a lot of big picture argumentation about ideals and not nearly as much detailed argumentation about implementation outside of some overly exuberant (for me) observations and predictions about cryptocurrency and the blockchain model of rule-based social organization that supports it. show less