Plurally Bad

about

(Est. 2008) “Singularity University (abbreviated SU) is a Silicon Valley think tank that offers educational programs and a business incubator. According to its website, it focuses on scientific progress and ‘exponential’ technologies. It was founded in 2008 by Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil at the NASA Research Park in California, United States.” SU has expanded in Silicon Valley and grown to 50 global chapters run by an alumni network from 110+ countries. (Wikipedia)

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related links

Singularity University press release
SingularityHub blog post

opinion/notes

Maybe I'm wrong to feel this way but everything about the presentation of this place rubs me the wrong way. To start with, it's not a university, which by definition is an institution of higher education that grants academic degrees. Singularity University does not grant academic degrees. The "Singularity" name is also pretentious as hell and the new tagline, "Be Exponential", further emphasis that attitude — Bill and Ted had a better spin on it. I feel slightly bad (I'll get over it, don't worry) about judging it on the surface like that because, as they share, "Without the Singularity University community of doers, zero-gravity 3D printing, drones for disaster relief, a simple blood test to help cure cancer by catching it early, artificial intelligence providing equal access to mental healthcare, and phones that help the visually impaired see, might not exist." All those are good things, so yeah, maybe it's not that bad a place. The new logo, though, doesn't help me take it any more seriously. It looks like the logo of a made-up university that is part of the plot in a movie, almost like a parody. Maybe I'm being unnecessarily harsh… I just find the logo too simplistic and more like an Adobe Illustrator tutorial than an actual logo. The wordmark is fine, so there is at least that that I can say nice about it.