Tech Singularity

The Tech Singularity (or Technological Singularity) is described by Christopher Michael Langan in his 2018 paper Metareligion as the Human Singularity as one of two possible evolutionary outcomes for humanity. In this context, the Tech Singularity represents a point of accelerated technological development—foreshadowed by mathematician John von Neumann—where progress in artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and biotechnology leads to transformative but destabilizing changes in human society. Langan characterizes it as a path of increasing centralization, in which wealth, power, and technological control concentrate in the hands of an elite, producing a “hive-like” social order and undermining human dignity and spiritual identity. Contrasted with the Human Singularity, which emphasizes distributed spiritual awakening and empowerment, the Tech Singularity is seen by Langan as a dehumanizing trajectory that can only be averted through the establishment of a unifying “metareligion” capable of reconciling science and spirituality.

In relation to mainstream notions of the Technological Singularity

In broader academic and popular discourse, the Technological Singularity is commonly associated with futurists such as Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, who describe it as a point where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, leading to runaway technological growth and unforeseeable societal transformations. These accounts often emphasize exponential progress in computation, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and cybernetics, with outcomes ranging from human–machine integration to potential post-human futures.

Christopher Michael Langan adopts the term Tech Singularity but situates it within a metaphysical and sociopolitical critique. Rather than focusing primarily on technological innovation itself, Langan emphasizes the dynamics of centralization and control: technological advances, in his view, concentrate power in oligarchic structures that erode individual freedom, reduce human beings to mechanistic “automata,” and sever the spiritual basis of identity. Whereas mainstream treatments sometimes portray the Technological Singularity as a potential stage of transcendence or progress, Langan interprets it as a dehumanizing trajectory contrasted with the more desirable Human Singularity, which centers on distributed spiritual unification. In this framework, the Tech Singularity is not merely a technological phenomenon but a systemic social outcome that can only be countered through the development of a logically grounded “metareligion” unifying science and spirituality.