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JASON SILVA: So Kevin Kelly, the co-founder of Wired Magazine,
has this wonderful idea about how the emergence of language
was actually the first singularity, right?
In other words, the world on the other side of that line,
after language emerged, would have
been unimaginable to the creatures
standing on the previous, on the other side of that line, right?
Trying to explain the nuances of a Shakespearean sonnet,
to an ape, are simply unimaginable.
Right?
This is inconceivable, we simply lacked the wetware, right?
So language.
What is language?
Kevin Kelly says it's a tool that
allows the mind to know what it's thinking, right?
It turned a feral mind into a tool
that could now think with purpose and deliberation,
right?
Language allowed us to create a virtual world in our heads,
and pull the present forward to meet that.
The ability to design, to envision, to plan, to imagineer
was the natural consequence to the emergence of language.
Again, a tool that allows the mind
to know what it's thinking, right?
Language has to do with sentience,
before language, there was no self-awareness,
there was no self consciousness, right?
Language came about as a kind of vortex of self-mirroring.
Right?
Language and self-awareness is kind of
like plugging a video camera into the TV,
aiming it at the TV, and then seeing the engulfing infinity,
right?
The recursive infinity loop that gets
formed, and-- and, I don't know, I
find that idea to be astonishing.
And when you really think of how it transformed
the mental operating system, right, you
can see why Kelly would call it the first singularity.
Language.
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