But this utopian resurrection and transcendance story is just one version of the singularity. There are many people who think AI is not physically impossible, nanotech is not physically impossible, and so recursively self-improving AI with strong abilities to act in the physical world is a possibility. Many of those people think that is a very dangerous possibility.
You can agree or disagree with the detailed arguments, but you cannot accuse these people of allowing wishful thinking to cloud their judgements.
I like MacLeod as a writer, but that slogan is damaging because many people hear it, laugh, and stop thinking.
You seem nice; forgive me if I get too dismissive here.
As a software practitioner it seems to me obvious that we are so many light years away from the kind of software the Singularity people are talking about that the whole thing is all a fantasy club, and a little embarrassing. It's like the detailed debates 19th century radicals used to have about society after the Revolution.
Also, the Singularity people always seem to do that moving target thing where as soon as you say one thing, they go: But that's not the Singularity, that's a misunderstanding of the Singularity. Leaves me thinking: it must be awfully subtle.
