Ryan sends along a ton of writings on the Singularity for your perusal at KurzweilAI.net. I was recently (sort of) singled out on another blog as someone who doesn't get the Singularity—I get it, I just don't think there's any reason to think anything of the sort is likely to happen. In particular—once you get past the poorly defined notions of both human consciousness and artificial intelligence that characterize such debates—these sorts of fantastic scenarios inevitably require intolerable hand-waving on the level of both energy and natural resources, an attitude of "Surely we'll figure something out" that really does sink to the level of religious faith.