Ubiquity has an interview with Ray Kurzweil on his ideas (and book) about what can be expected from accelerating rates of change in computing, communication, nanotechnology and biology. He sees all of these exponential trends coming together to create what he calls a "singularity," a point beyond which is is impossible to forsee the nature of human civilization.

He may be right that "the nonbiological side of our civilization's intelligence will become by the 2030s thousands of times more powerful than human intelligence and by the 2040s billions of times more powerful." But where will that leave us puny humans? Will we be slaves to a godlike machine intelligence? Will we be forced to renounce machine intelligence, as Frank Herbert predicted in his Dune novels? Or will we find a way to meld human and machine intelligences in some sort of utopia that augments and supports the freedom and individuality of both human and machine intelligences? Tough questions, yet to be addressed, but maybe answerable as we approach the singularity.