5. Merger of Human Technology and Human Intelligence -- which is the Singularity.

6. The Universe Wakes Up -- the other side of the Singularity.

Kurzweil is particularly fond of parables that explain the overwhelming nature of exponential increase. In his 2001 paper, he cites a story about the meeting of a Chinese emperor and the man who invented chess. When the chess inventor is offered a reward by the emperor, he asks only for a grain of rice to be placed on the first square of a chess board, to be doubled on each of the subsequent 63 squares. Somewhere after the middle of the chess board, the doublings exceed the capacity of China to produce rice. By the end, the number of grains would be unimaginable, a kind of singularity.

Our 19th century predecessors used the word singular to also mean something that is peculiar. One can imagine Sherlock Holmes noticing a singular incident.

But lest anyone think that the Singularity is viewed that way in the hidebound reaches of the ivory tower, Stanford University's Symbolic Systems Program co-hosted an event with the Center for the Study of Language and Information in May. The Singularity Summit was described as "a rare gathering of thinkers to explore the rising impact of science and technology on society. The summit has been organized to further the understanding of a controversial idea -- the singularity scenario."