Raymond Kurzweil wrote a book called, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology in 2005.

Is it coming?  Don't hold your breath.

Wikipedia (the bastion of knowledge that it is) states the following about the work.

He describes the singularity as resulting from a combination of three important technologies of the 21st century: genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (including artificial intelligence).
Four central postulates of the book are as follows:

1. A technological-evolutionary point known as "the singularity" exists as an achievable goal for humanity.
2. Through a law of accelerating returns, technology is progressing toward the singularity at an exponential rate.
3. The functionality of the human brain is quantifiable in terms of technology that we can build in the near future.
4. Medical advancements make it possible for a significant number of his generation (Baby Boomers) to live long enough for the exponential growth of technology to intersect and surpass the processing of the human brain.

I've read most of this book. It was given to me by my brother, because he thinks I'm a lot smarter than I really am.  Kurzweil targeted an approximate date of 2045 for the human race's ascendancy into the wonderful world of complete and total wonderment.  He believes that this is the time where our computer technology will completely exceed the powers and promise of the human brain, which will lead to incredible technologies, which will include nano-medicines that will prevent diseases and aging and all that bad stuff, leaving all of humanity to concentrate on art and invention and space travel and...dating twins or something like that.

Obviously, I have my concerns.

First and foremost, let me confess that I am nowhere near as smart as the aforementioned Kurzweil.  He's a genius with a history of prophetic truths.  He is one of the main pioneers in text-to-speech technology and all sorts of other stuff.  The dude is really, really smart...and I'm not.  Also, I honestly hope with all my heart that he's right and I'm wrong.  I pray that he's right and I'm wrong...

But I don't see it.  Will humans one day figure out artificial intelligence?  Probably.  That nano-stuff?  Maybe...I'm not sure.  You see, I've read stuff that says that cpu companies like intel and what not are really having issues making faster and smaller processors, which would be needed if all of this were to come to fruition, because they're having issues with the electrical flow colliding or conflicting or whatever they do at a molecular level--just generally not cooperating, I guess--within the processors now.  In other words, if we're having lots of trouble at the current sizes, how are we going to make them smaller?

Furthermore, and this is the gist of my whole issue, the concept of "nano" comes down to robots being able to build smaller robots who will in turn make even smaller robots who will...you see where I'm getting?  And I have yet to see this done at any level.  Do robots make robots now?  Sure, but they can't keep building smaller ones?  Why?  Because "no man can build a pencil." That's why....no robotic builders exist that can build all of the needed parts to build the next smaller robot...let a lone the next, next smaller robot.

Of course this is also the cool idea behind building massive robot armies...and did that really work out for the Separatists?

Maybe this is short sighted...maybe...but to me it seems the next big logical step if we're ever going to reach "The Singularity."  Prove to me you can do it to one order...because once that kind of thing starts, it would probably increase exponentially until we did have "nano" crap and then maybe there's hope...