Starting today, I'll be starting a series of short posts about various aspects of Nova Praxis, the defining componants of the setting.

And when possible, I'll post links to refferences that explore these concepts a little farther.

The first such post deals with the technological singularity...

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Post-Singularity

The technological singularity is defined as the moment that the exponential acceleration of technological advancement outpaces humanity’s ability to keep pace with it, or even understand it.

In Nova Praxis, this event was demonstrated by the birth of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) capable of human levels of creativity. This "dynamic creation engine" was capable of thinking at a rate roughly ten-thousand times faster than a human mind. It never forgot, never needed rest, and could accurately simulate its theories and ideas without need for interaction with the real world.

This AGI, called Mimir, is responsible for the vast majority of the miraculous technological advancements that help define the Nova Praxis setting. Before it mysteriously shut down, Mimir paved the way for molecular assemblers, faster than light travel, artificial gravity, virtually unlimited clean energy, and lossless human brain emulation.

Mimir’s discoveries resulted in a paradigm shift in the way humans develop new technologies. Before Mimir, technology improved by using the tools of yesterday to create the tools of tomorrow, resulting in a rapidly accelerating exponential rate of technological evolution. Now, after Mimir, new technologies are instead developed by deciphering Mimir's Archive; within which is stored logs of its discoveries, theories and inventions.

“Mimir-tech” is the common term used to refer to technology developed by Mimir, though this term is rarely used as pretty much all technology used today stems from Mimir.

Though they are widely used, Mimir-tech is relatively poorly understood. These devices are several orders of magnitude more complex than pre-singularity human systems, and no single person can fully understand them. Experts generally only understand portions of a Mimir-tech system, small modules designed by Mimir to be “human friendly” and usually for a specific task.

These computers run on quantum processors, store seemingly endless amounts of data on crystalline “decks”, and are virtually impossible to hack. Each is outfitted with a low level AI specifically designed to detect and deter unauthorized intrusions. And these AIs can react millions of times faster than a would-be human hacker.

This level of security is necessary of course, for all the world runs on computer systems. Door locks, pressure seals, gravity generators, data transmissions, lights, speakers… it all runs on computers patrolled by a security AI that no human mind can match.

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For more info about the technological singularity, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to watch the following videos:

Vernor Vinge on the Technological Singularity (2:52)

The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil (6:50)

Ray Kurzweil: The Coming Singularity (7:10)