Reading their stuff made me want to bite through my arms.

I'm all for a positive attitude, but this is exactly the kind of Web 2.0 tosh that gives our industry a bad name...

oh, sod it:

http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif

their entire premise is always couched in terms that suggest that no matter what form their singularity takes, we will have no choice but to bow down before it and submit to the will of the machines, with Ray and the gang presumably installed as the high priests of our new, robotheic society. It's all well and good espousing the many ways in which technological advances will make our lives better, but what's needed is some detail about how the transition from one state to the other will occur. As we've seen with OLPC, the gap between the haves and have-nots tends to grow without the have-nots seeing any of the benefit.

Fuzzy futurologist to deliver clear thinking? Somehow, I won't hold my breath waiting for excellence to ensue.

be granted a B.B. (bachelor of buzzwords among other less flattering interpretations).

Seriously, if you're among the 'the smartest and most passionate' you'll be doing this already - I very much doubt that Kurzweil et al will be bringing much to the party.

* Connection Failed

The system returned:

(111) Connection refused

Hey Ray, have you beamed up into a microchip without me?

..the US has Care in the Community too.

"Come along and pay us for a course of daydreaming !" Kerrrching

Brits seem to use the plural to refer to organizations - presumably implying, "...the people who work for SU intend to be super picky" rather than "...SU [the organization] intends to be super picky" - which is what they've actually WRITTEN.

It'd be nice if they could learn proper English.

> "singularity" from its use in physics to describe the breakdown of normal principles near a black hole.

Smartly hedged physics, Lewis. Lol. OTOH I see what you are driving at - the "black hole" is of course the one-way funding suck-fest, and the "breakdown of normal principles" would be the self-appointed freedom to dispense with the norms of decency and morality for the purpose of group-thinking up the best one-way human fuck-fest for the rest of us.

Were evolution true, the graduates of Hilarity University would surely be distinguishable by extremely lop-sided heads, laterally one hemisphere the size of a planet, the other the size of a pea.

As I understand it, a University is an mutually organised collection of professors and students (this is the minimum requirement; lecturers, administrators, librarians and security staff come later, a building to sit in is nice but not essential) - so a University is a group of people. Hence "....SU (they) intend to be....". For those who think that a University is some kind of building, this can be confusing.

When interacting with the outside world, a 'corporate body' presentation is usually used for administrative and legal convenience, so we also have 'The University (it) is going to seek planning permission for...'.

Exactly what I was thinking. "Pay us for the privilege of doing our work for us."

If the 'singularity' is such a good thing, why aren't the futurologists developing the software/hardware that will bring it about? Right, because they're too lazy and incompetent to be anything but a waste of oxygen.