(Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 2005)

on the singularity as perhaps a spiritual belief system and not just technical. Ray Kurzweil: serial tech entrepreneur who believes in the singularity, characterised as a Heinlein hero. some quotes from Kurzweil on consciousness (as it pertains to uploading backups of ourselves to computers, and Turing tests). talks a bit about genetic programming and how some people think that it could be the mechanism to reach singularity, but to do it right you need a fitness function that approximates human consciousness. idk, i kind of skimmed this, i would have been all up in this shit a year ago but now i don't really care