Interview: Vernor Vinge

Don't confuse what Vinge calls the Singularity with what Kurzweil calls
the Singularity. Kurzweil's messianic stuff seems to have very much less
rationality at the core of it than Vinge's. He seems to think we'll all
become gods if we just wait long enough, while Vinge simply says that we
cannot predict what will happen past that point. It may be good, it may be
bad, it may be nothing we can define as either.

(For a possibility on the nastier end of the predictable scale, see
Stross's _Accelerando_. I'm often amazed when people call that a
pro-Singularity book. If it's pro-Singularity then _1984_ is
pro-centralization...)