A Marxist condemned the Singularity. H+ Magazine responded. Below is my comment responding to H+.
The Singularity is NOT mind-uploading, but people could be forgiven for thinking it is. A big problem with Singularity debate is the domination of these issues by millionaire entrepreneurs, for example Ray Kurzweil, Jaan Tallinn, Peter Thiel, and Keith Kleiner.
Immortality will be available for everyone via stem cell regenerative medicine. Already average people have underdone regeneration and transplantation of their own body parts created via their own stem cells. I am very sure mind-uploading will prove to be nonsensical, it is a misunderstanding of "biology" and "machines."
Despite the Singularity dominance by rich aristocratic types, who frankly don't really grasp the meaning of technology, the Singularity is not about their one-sided narrow viewpoint.
Oppression is based wholly on scarcity. Technology liberates us from scarcity. The way technology increases freedom or democracy is not an "accidental outcome simply from creating ever more efficient and smaller machines." It is no accident for liberty to increase in synchronization with decreasing scarcity, a decrease created via machine progress. Increased liberty is a logical and inevitable outcome of decreased scarcity (technological advancement).
Oppression (lack of liberty) is only needed to ensure compliance with low wages and high prices, thus via decreased scarcity due to technology we see how the need to enforce austerity to benefit the rich is less pronounced (we've come a long way since the extremely austere days of serfdom), which dovetails perfectly with the abundance of technological tools for liberation. The interrelationship, regarding technology to erode scarcity and technology for liberation, is actually closer than a dovetail join, we are in essence considering the same thing.
Leaders may try to repress increased liberty, liberty which has been created via erosion of scarcity, but their attempts will ultimately be ineffectual because the erosion of scarcity will reach a point where resistance is futile.
In the future there will be no governments, no money, no work, total freedom.
