accelerating change

I appreciate and realize the accomplishments, to a certain degree, of this wonderful atomic age in which we are living. Scientific discoveries of today stagger the imagination. Nearly every day we read of almost unbelievable accomplishments. The age of the atom has only begun, and no one knows what exciting developments may yet unfold when the atomic research now in progress is completed.

But in a larger sense this has been the best of all centuries. In the long history of the earth there has been nothing like it. The life expectancy of man has been extended by more than 25 years. Think of it. It is a miracle. The fruits of science have been manifest everywhere. By and large, we live longer, we live better. This is an age of greater understanding and knowledge. We live in a world of great diversity.

Moore’s Law is really a thing about human activity, it’s about vision, it’s about what you’re allowed to believe. Because people are really limited by their beliefs, they limit themselves by what they allow themselves to believe about what is possible.

My brethren and sisters, I rejoice in the largeness of this work of God⁠—this dispensation of the fulness of times. I love it, in part, because of its greatness⁠—in its very bigness there is inspiration. I love to contemplate the puposes of God in their farreaching possibilities. I rejoice to feel that today the children of men are moving up to a higher and truer conception of the things of God.

[The Gentiles] will make wonderful improvements in machinery of every kind, especially implements of husbandry for the working of the land and raising grain, saving a great deal of labor to the saints in building up the kingdom. The Lord will inspire the Gentiles to do this, but they will not acknowledge his hand in it, nor give him the glory …

A miracle is an occurrence which, first, cannot be repeated at will by man, or, second, is not understood in its cause and effect relationship. History is filled with such miracles. What is more, the whole story of man’s progress is the conversion of “miracles” into controlled and understood events. The airplane and radio would have been miracles, yesterday.

D.H. Fowler: The world is getting better. One of the greatest evidences of it is the contrivances that men are continually bringing into use for the saving of time and energy. Only a few years ago the cured can of meat was about the only product of the packing house. Now there are sideproducts that form a great asset to the business.

A very real “pantheism” if you like (in the etymological meaning of the word) but an absolutely legitimate pantheism⁠—for if, in the last resort, the reflective centers of the world are effectively “one with God,” this state is obtained not by identification (God becoming all) but by the differentiating and communicating action of love (God all in everyone).

I believe also that with this flood of knowledge concerning these highly spiritual things, there has come into the world, almost imperceptibly, a more generally diffused and brighter spirit of intelligence than was known before; like collateral rays shooting off to right and left from the more direct light of God’s revelations which ushered in the great work of the last days.

The matter and energy in our vicinity will become infused with the intelligence, knowledge, creativity, beauty, and emotional intelligence (the ability to love, for example) of our humanmachine civilization. . . . So in a sense, we can say that the Singularity will ultimately infuse the universe with spirit.