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Recently, Michael Wesch was named national professor of the year for research and doctoral universities. A few weeks later, Vincent Hofer was named a Rhodes Scholar. One teaches cultural anthropology and one studied agribusiness at Kansas State. Jon Wefald longed to hear from anyone interested in either honoree. "Nobody called," said K-State's longtime university president. Instead, intercollegiate sports dominate far more discussions.

Can the pace of technological progress continue to speed up indefinitely? Is there not a point where humans are unable to think fast enough to keep up with it? With regard to unenhanced humans, clearly so. But what would a thousand scientists, each a thousand times more intelligent than human scientists today, and each operating a thousand times faster than contemporary humans (because the information processing in their primarily nonbiological brains is faster) accomplish? One year would be like a millennium. What would they come up with?

Downloading the Human Brain

This, then, is the Singularity. The Singularity is technological change so rapid and so profound that it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.