Once serious environmental deterioration sets in, the curve of technological change will flatten, even if we develop ‘godlike AIs,’ for the simple reason that intelligence itself is not enough to sustain growth. You also need resources, externally-derived social stability, etc. Climate change threatens technological growth by threatening its fundamental drivers.

Banksy once told Swindle magazine: ‘I have no interest in ever coming out. I figure there are enough self-opinionated a**holes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is.’

Laura McKensie, 21, was arrested and thrown in a holding cell due to a mix-up with her travellers visa. Laura was held in legal limbo for weeks without access to her parents or a chance to explain herself.

Coders were told that their applications would have constant access to the Net, not the usual mobile hurry-up-and-wait feel. Working with the cloud — enabling programs to push or pull info to or from the Web — was a must. All Android phones would know where they were at all times, either by tapping into onboard GPS or by cross-referencing cell towers using a proprietary database owned by Google. And applications would be allowed to share information, which at the simplest level meant the kind of copy-and-paste functionality across all programs that cell phones currently lack.

Google says it has learned the rules of the game — sometimes the hard way. Not long ago, the company enhanced its mobile version of Picasa, a photo-editing, storage, and slide-show service, so users could instantly upload images from their camera phone. Google took it to a phone company for placement but couldn’t get the necessary sign-off. The service, which was free, would have competed with a similar proprietary offering the carrier was rolling out — and charging $10 a month for. The idea of instant mobile uploading to Picasa was quietly shelved.

So we have intelligence augmentation through both biochemistry and human-computer interface well underway and increasingly powerful, with artificial intelligence on some possible horizon. Let’s cast aside the loaded term “Singularity” and just talk about getting smarter. This is happening now, and will under nearly any plausible scenario keep happening for at least the next decade and a half. Enhanced intelligence alone won’t solve global warming and other environmental threats, but it will almost certainly make the solutions we come up with more effective. We could deal with these crises without getting any smarter, to be sure, and we shouldn’t depend on getting smarter later as a way of avoiding hard work today. But we should certainly take advantage of whatever new capacities or advantages may emerge.

Wearing special legs he made for himself during his recovery and rehabilitation, Herr was soon out climbing again. With work, he was able to scale rock surfaces more difficult than those he’d tackled before the accident – not, he will tell you, because of the prostheses, but because he’d devoted himself to the sport. When he tired of the extreme-athlete life, Herr returned to school, enrolling at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. There, he discovered a passion for math and science and secured his first patent for prosthetic-limb design before graduating.