The Machine is Us/ing Us

While strolling through the blogosphere I stumbled over this amazing video: The Machine is Us/ing Us

It's a beautiful 5-minute explanation of what HTML and XML do, what linking does to the web, where the web is coming from and where the web is going. This video is full of interesting ideas and some heavy stuff to meditate over.

Are we actually creating the Singularity? It is obvious that all the trends in computer technology point into only one direction. Data transfers are getting faster, memory capacities bigger and networks every more complex.

Millions of people are spending not just their work life, but also their free time on creating a dense information network that enables us to create even more information tomorrow. New computers allow for new science and engineering which allows for faster, new computers...

And the same is true in entertainment. Books. Movies about books. Games about movies about books. Web pages about games... and it keeps on going on. Some of the more fantastic notions of science fiction authors about the future of humanity are starting to look increasingly likely.

So are we building the machine? Would we know? If the web approaches the complexity of our brains, will we stop? Could we? Is the machine already using us?