Random terminology:
Nerdocalypse, or as a character in
Ken MacLeod's 1998 novel
The Cassini Division called it: "The Rapture for nerds".
The Nerdocalypse is a pessimistic doomsday view of what technology futurists call "
the Singularity". The Singularity is a hypothesized point in the future where rapid progress in technology creates an "intelligence explosion", often seen as the point where machines are capable of computational power several times greater than that of a human brain, and subsequently evolve an artificial and self-improving intelligence. Futurist
Ray Kurzweil believes that point is just around the corner, predicting that by the 2020s personal computers will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain, and that around this time the first computer will pass the
Turing test (where a human is fooled by the computer into thinking they're talking to a real person in casual conversation).
By itself the Singularity is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, Kurzweil also predicts that in the '20s human longevity will be greatly extended, in the '30s nanobots will exist to repair our bodies on the fly, and in the '40s computers will be able to make "back-ups" of human memories (effective immortality), all because of the Singularity. As early as 2045, he says, non-biological intelligence will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today, enabling all manner of miracles. But what's a Heaven on Earth without an Apocalypse?
Enter the Rapture for Nerds. You've seen it in virtually every science fiction film: Machines rise up and take the place of their former master by force (
Terminator,
Matrix, and so on). It's a doomsday scenario just like any other end-of-life-as-we-know-it narrative in human mythology, except this version has the sexy component of computers and robots with
guns, lots of guns. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the Nerdocalypse compounds the intellectual idea of the Singularity–machines gaining super intelligence–beyond mere intelligence, more into a statement of the
human condition. It's not a story about machines. It's a story about what makes one human. Characteristically it is other traits beyond intelligence that allows the humans to survive and win the war against machines in these stories. While machines are described as being "smarter", they are typically described as lacking other human traits as such as emotion. Love conquers all is the ultimate theme of the man vs. machine story. Thus love is what defines a human, not intelligence.
Also interesting, but not surprising, is how much the Nerdocalypse tale involves archetypal struggles in the human condition... ok, let's just call them stereotypes. Nerds are stereotypically males. Nerds stereotypically have trouble relating to females. Nerds are stereotypically left-brain centric and, like machines in the Nerdocalypse, have trouble reconciling with right-brain emotions. Left-brain, stereotypically male. Right-brain, stereotypically female. Reconciling
binary opposition (yin and yang, male and female, rational and emotional) are all archetypal conflicts
in being human. The Nerdocalyptic tale is a mythos attempting to resolve the duality and conflict that exists between sense and soul–a conflict humans have been trying to solve long before tech ever arrived.
In short, the Rapture for Nerds is less about technophobia than it lets on to be, and not about machines taking over the world at all. It's a love story, which is entirely human. It's a nerd story. With as much awkward clumsiness as you'd expect from a nerd, the apocalyptic tale of intelligent machines taking over the world, and human beings attempting to survive on non-intellectual emotional skills, is the nerd's way of placing the female on a pedestal and professing their nerd-love. The nerd is doing what nerds do, trying to get laid.
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