Building on an earlier idea of a “technological singularity” introduced in 1993 by the science-fiction writer and computer scientist Vernor Vinge, Kurzweil proposed that we are approaching a singularity in which our bodies and brains will be augmented by genetic alterations, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence to become hybrid cyborgs no longer bound by the constraints of biology. It was suggested that this would result in a collective intelligence that will be enormously more powerful than all present human intelligence combined.
