Vernor Vinge

Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all – no one's around to write horror stories.

We will soon create intelligences greater than our own ... When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.

Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood...and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.

The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.