I'm going to step way outside my purlieu and declare that I agree with Odious about Ray Kurzweil. We may be approaching a singularity in regard to information technology, but if so, it's a singularity at which advances in computing no longer qualify as progress in any meaningful way. I am very unconvinced that the best of all possible data manipulation will imminatize any eschaton. The cessation of meaningful progress in this field would, however, drive us to progress in some other area, and what it might be I doubt any erudition can rightfully speculate. Since we're illustrating our ramblings with quotes from early 20th Century authors, here's some C.S. Lewis:

Imaginative writers try sometimes to picture this next step-- the "Superman" as they call him; but they usually only succeed in picturing someone a good deal nastier than man as we know him... Thousands of centuries ago huge, very heavily armoured creatures were evolved. If anyone had at that time been watching the course of Evolution he would probably have expected that it was goingto go on to heavier and heavier armour. But he would have been wrong... The stream of Evolution was not going to flow on in the direction in which he saw it flowing: it was in fact going to take a sharp bend.

Superman indeed, Mr. Kurzweil. I've been doing a truly repulsive amount of research on info- and bio-technology of late. The sorcerors who weave spells of our numbers and our blood offer some quite wondrous tricks, but no true changes. The world and people outside the labs grow no more tractable. The question is not whether we will develop this miraculous, almost mystical technology, but rather, what will it ever be good for besides perpetuating itself? If increased computing power can spontaneously generate an answer, we might have a truly impressive singularity; but I see no reason to believe that it will.