Dot Net Singularity Approaches

Quote, man made intelligence is 30 years away, by just about anyone in the last 300 years.


So having taken my poke at the Singularity that is near (and always will be), I would like to propose that the Dot Net Singularity (DotNet Singularity) is near. And it will change everything.

The Dot Net Singularity will occur when the Dot Net Framework is free of the Win32 API (and Win64).

I can envision two responses. Oh that's already here and it has not changed anything. Or that will never come you have to have an OS and the API talks to the OS.

On the already here front, I agree there are manifestations near the Singularity. Silverlight ships a stripped down version of the framework. The Mono project is an open source port of Dot Net. Mono can be run on Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux, BSD and even on some Windows operating systems. There is a special versions of the framework, the Compact Framework that is useful in embedded applications; the Micro Framework for even more constrained apps. And in the case of Moonlight you have a Silverlight on Linux courtesy of the existence of Mono.

Moonlight illuminates an interesting feature of the Dot Net Singularity. Is it a cause of the Singularity or a result of the Singularity? Well both, and it is also a rebuttal to the 'won't change anything' argument.

Now in response to the "you always need an OS and thus you will always need an API like Win32 or Win64", I can just point to the above. The Compact and Micro versions as well as the Silverlight version are doing two things at the same time. On the one hand they put pressure to free the framework from the OS. At the same time, the apply pressure to retain as much of the features of the framework as possible at the least resource cost. Nice pair of evolutionary pressures.

So when will the Dot Net Singularity occur? I am guessing 2020.