Bryan Appleyard,The Singularity and The Butlerian Jihad Final Part

The idea of the Singularity presumes that we an actually know the future by a process of extrapolation.A moments thought shows us nothing could be far wrong.Two of the most ambitious science fiction films of the 20th century were the Alexander Korda ,H G Wells film Things To Come1936 and the Stanley Kubrick ,Arthur C Clarke film 2001 A Space Odyssey 1968.In both cases the leading scientific prophet of the day collaborated with a state of the art film producer to give a vision of the future.Both the films now when viewed tell you nothing about the future but plenty about the culture of the 1930s and 1960s respectively.Bryan Appleyard in his book is essentially a skeptic rather than a true believer in the technology he is describing.He in fact mentions the downside of the technology in the form of cyberwarfare. There is also the development of electro mangnetic pulse weapons specifically designed to kill computers and other machines.This could lead to a battlefield returned to World War 1 conditions in which everything more complex than guns ceases to function.In fact this spectacle of technology being developed to destroy technology is pretty well the definition of the  Butlerian Jihad in Erewhon and Dune.A combination of this technology combined with the anti-scientific ideology of religious fundamentalism may in fact lead us to a very different world to the one expected by the techno utopians of Silicon Valley.