Inside The Singularity

    Evolution occurs at the species level.
    It isn't constant either, once an adaptation works evolution
doesn't continue if the environment is stable, maybe a tweak
here or there. Life, including humanity, is just the local landscape expressing itself. Like how a cloud is the result of a process, soare we. What is new and strange and wonderful about humans is that we, as a species, now adapt faster than the environment changes.
We can race far ahead using our most human attribute, imagination and figure out ways to adapt before the universe forces us to. Tools are one way.
    Other hominids evolved along with us, the environment was producing them a million years ago, yet only we succeeded. When a rock became a tool, an extension of our body produced by a mind, the Singularity began. We are /inside/ it right now.
    For very long stretches those simplest of tools was good
enough. There weren't a lot of us and the evolution of tools
follows the evolution of species, good enough sticks around.
Then the environment changed, the green lands of the Sahara dried into the sandy desolation we have today and a whole new set of tools became necessary. Those tools let us harness the environment in radically new ways, using plants and animals to our benefit.
    The Agricultural Revolution.
    Now existence was not solely about survival. With a surplus of energy we had time to think, not just react.
    Thats where the line on the graph of our intelligence aims
towards the stars.
    Today we don't adapt to the environment, we adapt to each other and the changes we make to the environment, further speeding up evolution.
    Seven billion humans is living testament to our success, and while many survive because of the infrastructure we have wrought to make our planet work for us, if that was stripped away it would be a setback, not the Apocalypse.
    It will take a truly cosmic event now to stop us from taking
over and reshaping the universe.
    Maybe that was the point all along.