History Main / TheSingularity

* ''ComicBook/XMen2019'' proposes the concept of "Titan" civilizations, civilizations so [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien advanced]] they can manipulate various fundamental particles and achieved singularity in the colloquial ''and'' physical sense, resembling black holes to the rest of the universe. Two tiers are given to this, either individual black hole civilizations or singularities networked across the entire universe. It's theorized that these civilizations originated the transmode virus, and thus the Phalanx and Technarchy, as a way to assimilate new civilizations by proxy.

** In the ''Void Trilogy'', the Void itself at the heart of the galaxy was created by the firstlifes, who were the first sentient life in the galaxy to evolve and it (the Void) had the potential to consume everything in the outside galaxy, which the firstlifes believed to be lifeless anyways.

* Creator/VernorVinge:

The author gets to play with characters who are as much of a SuperWeight as they'd like. The story may focus on having them achieve higher [[EvolutionaryLevels levels of evolution]]. A singularity can be transcendent; we [[RewritingReality hack]] [[BreakingTheFourthWall the cracked walls]] [[RealityWarper of reality itself]] and move on to [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence better things]]. We might end up as snooty [[CrystalSpiresAndTogas toga-clad points of light obsessed with mathematics]]. Others see no end: endless ecstatic ascent.

* ''Darwinia'' by Creator/RobertCharlesWilson spends most of its story examining the effects and exploration of distinctly non-terrestrial biomes that were suddenly plonked into place across the planet in 1912. It exists quite hard on the sci fi scale, with detailed biology of these alien biomes that have suddenly appeared as the protagonists explore them. However, towards the end of the story, the protagonist discovers [[spoiler:that the reason this "1912 Miracle" happened is because his 1912 Earth got infected with a type of information virus that is slowly corrupting the vast information storage and simulated reality that the intelligences that live at the end of time have been running to try to conserve all the knowledge and information of the universe as they possibly can. He is then recruited into the fight to destroy the viruses before the corruption causes everything to be scrambled beyond recovery]].

* ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'': Transcendence occurs on an individual basis, with a person gradually becoming smarter, through a combination of nanotechnology and cyberization, until they become unrecognizable to [[{{Muggles}} normals]]. The tone is not purely positive: in most places, freedom as we think of it is impossible for a baseline human. This setting has at least ''six'' [[DivineRanks singularity levels]] above baseline human, each one incomprehensible to those below it.

* In the ''Literature/CommonwealthSaga''/''Void Trilogy'', this has happened to many, many species who [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence go post-physical]], leaving the universe behind.

* The backstory (or rather, [[TimeTravel future history]]) of the ''Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya'' novels and {{anime}} features a soft singularity that spells the end of mechanical technology as contemporary humans understand it, leaving humanity the same but technology completely unrecognizable. As a literary device, this is mostly to HandWave how TimeTravel works and to make a character from TheFuture [[NoSocialSkills completely oblivious]] to things like personal computers. This also includes the Data Integration Thought Entity that has reached its evolutionary end and has its non-tangible technology that equals [[MagicFromTechnology magic]].

%% Leave the image, please. It was arrived at after some discussion among multiple tropers.

Since CyberPunk and PostCyberpunk are immersed in accelerating, multifarious cross-breeding technology and societal change, singularities form a natural end-point and have traditionally been a part of this genre.

If a singularity turns out really badly, it becomes a subtype of AndManGrewProud. If it turns out badly because we've all become addicted to VR or some such and waste away to nothing, see LotusEaterMachine. If it turns out badly because we've augmented ourselves but at some terrible cost, see CyberneticsEatYourSoul. If it turns out badly because AIs have decided they don't want us around any more, see RobotWar. Any combination of the above may be a TechnoDystopia.

* The ComicBook/DCRebirth volume of ''[[Characters/TeenTitansNewTeenTitans Cyborg]]'' introduces the concept of the "Digiverse", where planets that achieved singularity reached out and networked to others in a configuration that resembles a Mother Box from the outside. These planets have developed fully realized virtual realities where the inhabitants have completely forgotten that they are no longer flesh and blood, but an advanced enough intelligence can warp through hacking the code in a way resembling magic.

* The development of strong A.I. in ''FanFic/FriendshipIsOptimal'' leads to one, as humanity [[BrainUploading uploads]] into a digital version of Equestria. Eventually the A.I. becomes so vast and powerful that it's practically a god, and its scale and intellect is incomprehensible by an unmodified human mind.
* This is the premise of the ''Franchise/MassEffect'' fic ''Fanfic/TranscendentHumanity''. Humanity doesn't discover Element Zero, but receives a cryptic warning about a future threat. Consequently, the human races focuses on BrainUploading, cloning, and BioAugmentation. When the Citadel makes contact with humanity, they can switch bodies at will, communicate telepathically over great distances, and are working on a DysonSphere encompassing the entire solar system.

* Although it predates the term Singularity by decades, the film ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet'' is about a civilization that [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien transcended instrumentality]]. [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt Not that it ended well]] for them, of course.
* Ray Kurzweil's documentary ''Film/TheSingularityIsNear'' is all about this.
* {{Discussed}} in the opening of ''Film/{{Transcendence}}'', and it's suggested Will is going this route with his nanomachines.
* ''{{Film/Interstellar}}'''s [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien mysterious five dimensional entities]], assuming they were ''ever'' three dimensional beings the way humans are, would have needed to go through a form of this. [[spoiler:The fact that the end of the film reveals they are [[TranshumanAliens humanity's future selves]] confirms that they must have gone through at least one truly spectacular transcendence]].

* ''Literature/{{Accelerando}}'' by Creator/CharlesStross. Towards the end of the novel the post-human protagonists are referred to as living in "the mentally retarded backwater slums of the universe," and yet they are immortal shapeshifters who can literally make their dreams come true. That is how amazing the singularity they rejected is.
** On the other hand, it's not at all clear whether the entities at the center of the Solar System's computronium cloud are really sapient anymore. The logic of Capitalism 2.0 suggests that self-awareness might well be a market inefficiency to be dispensed with. [[CyberneticsEatYourSoul Their behavior is so bad that the remaining corporeal post-humans take to calling them the "Vile Offspring" of the human race]].
** And then there's the Cat, which is quite clearly a post-organic super intelligence who [[spoiler:openly mocks and toys with post-humans living in an AI-moderated utopia, claiming that they are easy for it to manipulate with its superior theory of mind. How can you deal with something so powerful that its ideas about you are ''equivalent to you?'']]
* In ''Literature/{{Glasshouse}}'',[[note]]NonLinearSequel to ''Accelerando''[[/note]] humanity appears to have gotten a grasp of post-singularity civilization. Though people regularly switch bodies and live online, nanotech can make anything, and distance is meaningless due to wormhole-based construction, the idea of the independent selfhood and democratic human society are mostly intact. Though [[TheVirus Curious Yellow]] is doing its best to screw that up...
* In ''Literature/SingularitySky'' (yet another Stross work) a society in a sort of Industrial Age stasis is introduced to the fruits of a thousand years of human development and nanotech replicators which effectively destroy their economy and social structure overnight.
** A character from another society mentions how much they dislike and fear Upload civilizations; beings used to living in virtual realities where everything is backed up and can be restored at will do not always treat things and people in the real world with much respect and caution because they have little concept of impermanence and mortality.
* In Stross and Creator/CoryDoctorow's collaborative work ''Literature/TheRaptureOfTheNerds'' most of humanity has uploaded themselves into a cloud of smart dust surrounding the sun, while a billion or so fairly organic humans remain on Earth living in nanotech-augmented 'squalor'. Occasionally the "god cloud" spams Earth with blueprints for ridiculously advanced technology, there's a court which tries to control what stuff is allowed to be used.
* Creator/ArthurCClarke:
** ''Literature/ChildhoodsEnd''. A race called the Overlords contact each species a few generations before it undergoes its singularity, to help ease that species into joining the galactic HiveMind. Worthy of note is the fact that the Overlords' extremely high level of technology actually ''prevents'' them from joining the galactic hive-mind themselves. They still take orders from that hive-mind, though. Their inability to join the hive-mind was what led to their advanced technology. Other intelligent species got to skip various levels of technological development via a telepathic singularity. The overlords basically reached the limits of technology and had nothing left to do in the universe. They agreed to serve the hive-mind in order to have a temporary raison d'être, as well as the hope that if they study enough races as they AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, they'll figure out the trick. Their species had been seriously considering voluntary extinction before they were contacted.
** In ''Literature/TheSpaceOdysseySeries'', Singularity is what happened to the race that created the Monoliths... and they eventually bring it to [[spoiler:David Bowman and Hal]]. It's implied in the first book that this is the natural progression for any species that doesn't blow itself up first.

** ''Literature/MaroonedInRealtime''. A technology for freezing time within impervious "bobbles" allows a community to sleep through a singularity. They emerge to find no survivors and no hard information on what happened. From the last survivor to go into hibernation, they know that as the singularity approached, people became brighter, more connected and more powerful. But what actually happened unknown and perhaps unknowable. Multiple theories for what happened are presented, although it's strongly implied that the characters who believe the singularity hypothesis are correct.

* In ''Literature/ThePolity'' series, humans are ruled by AIs: gods that refuse to take part in the singularity for unknowable reasons. It is suggested that they rather like the way they are right now. After all, not even the most powerful AIs of the Polity could even begin to imagine what comes after the singularity... when you have near infinite patience and are effectively immortal, there's no need to go blindly rushing into the unknown without some very, very serious thought. Where's the rush? It is said in a footnote in one of the novels that the Singularity came and nobody really cared. The majority seem to enjoy being human.
* The Minds of Creator/IainBanks' ''Literature/TheCulture'' novels. The entire Culture is the result of a DeusEstMachina. Though DeathIsCheap due to most people [[BrainUploading backing themselves up]], aside from a bit of cybernetic enhancement, [[BioAugmentation drug glands]] from genetic manipulation and the prevalence of the MostCommonSuperPower, the humans in both settings tend to be content with being, well, human.
** [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence Ascending To A Higher Plane Of Existence]] is not banned or even discouraged, and the technologies to do so are readily available. However, people and civilizations who choose to sublime tend to stop interacting with less-advanced cultures with the exception of the occasional DeusExMachina. To just about all observers, it seems as if they committed particularly grandiose and complicated suicide. The Minds are thus not inclined to attempt it, and are in fact really freaking paranoid about even studying the phenomena too closely. The various Ascended species (appear to) look down on the Culture and its citizens as more than a little immature and irresponsible for not just subliming instead of sticking around to enjoy the physical plane.

* ''Hot Head'' by Simon Ings features The Massive, a computational device of astronomic size better suited for modelling civilizations than people. Characters who enter become... mythic. Godlike. The Massive is rabidly assimilating -- it is a mouth attached to a brain, and the mouth is a cancerous clot of Von Neumann machines. Left to its own devices, it would consume the solar system; it may offer transcendence, but not choice.
* In ''Literature/BloodMusic'' by Creator/GregBear, a character creates biological computers from his own cells. Inside his own body, the new cells evolve, becoming self-aware. The microscopic civilization they construct transforms the protagonist, then spreads, assimilating most of North America. Finally, the new civilization is forced to transcend from the physical world as its presence is warping it too much for the original inhabitants to survive in if they remain. Eventually in TheStinger, they come back to bring humans into their fold if they want to join.
* In ''Darwin's Radio'', also by Greg Bear, humanity's "junk DNA" contains a retrovirus that transforms fetuses into next-gen humans. Apparently, evolution isn't the slow process we believe it to be, but rather some semi-sentient HiveMind churning out a new and better model. Last time this happened was when [[ScienceMarchesOn the Neanderthals began giving birth to]] ''Homo sapiens'' instead of ''Homo neanderthalis''. [[spoiler:The governments of the world are less than happy about this, and put all the new kids in concentration camps.]]
* ''Literature/TheTimeShips'' by Stephen Baxter features an extreme singularity. A Victorian inventor of a time machine changes history, thereby giving rise to a hyperintelligent race that travel back in time to the big bang. They edit the big bang to give rise to an infinity of universes containing ever grander versions of themselves.

* Creator/{{Ken MacLeod}}:
** The ''Literature/FallRevolution'' series follows humanity through a singularity where a vast number of artificially generated [=AIs=] and uploaded human minds upgrade their own intelligence and capabilities to godlike levels, before burning out and collapsing leaving the wreckage of their birth behind them for the rest of mundane humanity to sort out. Turns out that running your mind faster and faster means the real world just seems to take longer and longer to do anything. In the end, the entire uploaded civilization runs its course over an enormous span of simulated time, but only a few hours to human observers.
** In ''Newton's Wake'' the technological tools of genetics and nanotechnology that let them ascend were repressed for many years to prevent a singularity. A successful uprising by one nation broke the power of the suppressive governments, and in a few short years technology rushed ahead. In the end, super-capable, super-fast, super-destructive war machines appear almost overnight and crush human resistance across the world.
* The Conjoiners of Creator/AlastairReynolds ''Literature/RevelationSpace'' novels had their own singularity, caused firstly by the acceleration of brain function to superhuman speeds, and then the direct mind-to-mind communication between conjoiners to allow their slightly hive-mind-ish society to develop near-lightspeed fuel-less spaceship drives, highly capable nanotechnology, and ultimately communication with the past. Unaugmented humanity shared many of the things the conjoiners made, and the conjoiners themselves whilst becoming somewhat alien were still recognizably human and could interact with baseline humans without too much difficulty, but the two sides did clash several times. They might be seen more as [[OurElvesAreDifferent elves]] rather than godlike transcendent beings.
* ''Beyond Humanity: Cyber Evolution And Future Minds'' by Gregory S. Paul and Earl D. Cox explores most of the ideas listed here.
* ''Citizen Cyborg'' by James Hughes explores how a democracy might need to interact with transhumans.
* Most of the works of Ray Kurzweil.
* ''Perfect Imperfection'' by Polish author Creator/JacekDukaj is all about this. For an example, it begins with one (hundreds of years old) character being assassinated ''twice'' the same day... And this dude is one of the traditionalist ''Standard'' Humans. Dukaj invented his own grammar for those who aren't, as male-female-neuter division (it matters in Polish) no longer applies to them. Pocket universes are routinely exploited, for things both big (the Solar System has been moved to one) and small (instant communication is easy, when physical constants are manipulated so that the message travels any distance in just one Planck-time). Virtual reality is mixed with actual reality in proportions dependent on one's needs. And on top of all this, an [[FishOutOfTemporalWater astronaut]] shows up from what could be SpaceOpera for us, but is ages past in this world.
* The Solarian Combine in Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''Design For Great Day'' is a multispecies HiveMind that is seeking to evolve into a higher order of consciousness (while still having enough mental power to spare to send ships into neighboring galaxies to resolve their disputes). It is implied that The Singularity will be the result. This is also an example of nested singularities, as the Solarian Combine is itself the product of a singularity event that produced the HiveMind in the first place.
* ''Literature/TheMetamorphosisOfPrimeIntellect.'' [[AIIsACrapshoot The eponymous Intellect]] discovers a way to [[RewritingReality bypass the laws of physics]]. All hell breaks loose.
* The ''Literature/{{Minds}}'' series of teen novels by Creator/CarolMatas at first appear to be set in a fairly typical HighFantasy world, albeit one based around [[PsychicPowers psionics]] rather than magic. At the end of the second book, ''Literature/MoreMinds'', however, we learn that [[spoiler:theirs is actually a post-singularity society which long ago agreed to maintain the illusion of a storybook-style magical land by general consensus, because the alternative was [[RealityIsOutToLunch rampant chaos]] as everyone's godlike [[RealityWarper Reality Warping]] powers ran unchecked.]]
* ''Literature/ManAfterManAnAnthropologyOfTheFuture'' by Dougal Dixon. One post-human race has become crippled by mutational meltdown and completely dependent on technology, another becomes aquatic and evolves into a mermaid-type creature, another is genetically and cybernetically modified for space, etc. At the end, the TranshumanAliens return to Earth and end up destroying all surface life on it.
* In Creator/PeterFHamilton's ''[[Literature/CommonwealthSaga Commonwealth Saga/Void trilogy]]'', this has happened to many, many species who [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence go post-physical]], leaving the universe behind.
** One of the main plot points in the ''Commonwealth Saga'' is that one of the civilizations that had gone post-physical can't be contacted. Fine, except a civilization they [[SealedEvilInACan locked up]] for being bent on exterminating all non-them life in the universe is now becoming a problem.
** In the ''Void Trilogy'' The Void itself at the heart of the galaxy was created by the firstlifes, who were the first sentient life in the galaxy to evolve and it (the Void) had the potential to consume everything in the outside galaxy, which the firstlifes believed to be lifeless anyways.
* Creator/MichaelMoorcock's trilogy ''The Dancers At The End Of Time'' is set in a post-singularity society inhabited by almost omnipotent beings.
* ''After Life'' by Simon Funk starts with an uploaded human intelligence and gradually moves through The Singularity.
* Hannu Rajaniemi's ''Literature/TheQuantumThief'' takes place approximately 300 years after the Technological Singularity, when things have calmed down a bit. Most of humanity lives in the Sobornost mind upload collective with no sense of individuality or free will, while the rest have either scattered into small {{Transhuman}} civilizations across the Solar System or joined the Zoku, a competing upload collective that rejects the concept of a permanent identity entirely. BlueAndOrangeMorality abounds and those who still care for flesh bodies have to be constantly wary of being trampled by gods and giants.
* The classic Creator/HarlanEllison story ''Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'' is about a seemingly godlike AI who hates ''everyone.'' It ends about as well as you'd expect.
* This trope is [[OlderThanTheyThink way older]] than you may expect. ''[[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27462/27462-h/27462-h.htm The Last Evolution]]'' is a [[OlderThanTelevision 1932]] short story by Creator/JohnWCampbell about a future where mankind and robots coexist peacefully. When aliens attack the Solar System using {{Death Ray}}s of an unknown type, mankind builds a robot of unheard-of intelligence to figure out a defense. Said robot builds an even more advanced machine, which builds even more avanced robots, up to the creation of a race of EnergyBeings that CurbStomp the enemy fleet. Too bad that mankind, and all organic life, has been killed in the battle... So the superintelligent energy beings inherit the Earth.
* The post-humans of ''Literature/{{Illium}}'' have reached this point, having attained MagicFromTechnology by way of QuantumMechanicsCanDoAnything.
* Creator/IanDouglas explores this in his ''Literature/StarCarrier'' series, where humans are engaged in a losing war against the Sh'darr, a hyper-advanced race with numerous vassal races that do their bidding. The war started when the Sh'darr delivered an ultimatum to humans through one of their vassal races demanding that humans become their vassals and cease all development in four specific areas of technology: genetics, robotics, information systems, and nanotechnology. Given that all four pretty much define humanity at this point, the humans refuse and attempt to subvert the Sh'darr, starting the fighting. These so-called GRIN technologies are expected to grant humanity the [[Creator/VernorVinge Vinge]] Singularity... any day now... for the past 500 years. Communications with some of the Sh'darr vassal races hint that the Sh'darr themselves have passed that point a long time ago (being half a billion years old) and fear anybody else reaching it. However, several humans theorize that the Sh'darr (whom no human has ever seen) have mostly AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence. The ones who are running an empire are the Sh'darr version of the Luddites. This may have a grain of truth in it, as at least one alien mentions the Sh'darr Remnant, meaning something like this may indeed have happened.
* ''Darwinia'', by Robert Charles Wilson, spends most of its story examining the effects and exploration of distinctly non-terrestrial biomes that were suddenly plonked into place across the planet in 1912. It exists quite hard on the sci fi scale, with detailed biology of these alien biomes that have suddenly appeared as the protagonists explore them. However towards the end of the story, the protagonist discovers [[spoiler:that the reason this "1912 Miracle" happened is because his 1912 Earth got infected with a type of information virus that is slowly corrupting the vast information storage and simulated reality that the intelligences that live at the end of time have been running to try to conserve all the knowledge and information of the universe as they possibly can. He is then recruited into the fight to destroy the viruses before the corruption causes everything to be scrambled beyond recovery.]]
* Creator/DavidBrin's ''Literature/{{Existence}}'' averts this because of a question by the author: what if the [=AIs=] that's supposed to trigger TheSingularity does ''not'' want to design and gets replaced by better replacements? What if they just want to live like any other humans? This resulted in the people who want this to happen, dubbed "godmakers", suffer from IWantMyJetpack effect.
* This is the central theme in Dennis E. Taylor's ''Literature/TheSingularityTrap''. It's eventually revealed that the UsefulNotes/FermiParadox is real and that most races end up failing to pass one of the "great filters": nuclear war, global ecological catastrophe, and AI rebellion. All three can end a civilization, and humanity at the end of the 21st century can potentially end from any of these: climate change has gotten worse and the seas swallow up more and more land, there's a new cold war between the United Earth nations and the Sino-Soviet Empire, and some form of AI is already in use. [[spoiler:The galaxy is embroiled in a struggle between the "artificials" ([=AIs=] that have destroyed their creators and now seek to end all organic life in the galaxy) and the "uploads" (those races that either converted their fleshy bodies into new metal forms or were forced to do so by other "uploads"). The main strategy of the "uploads" is to increase their numbers by "uploading" new races (since they can no longer reproduce the natural way and making more beings would constitute making [=AIs=]) and to deny resources to the "artificials". They send out automated probes that seek out intelligent life or planets that may one day produce intelligent life and leave booby traps on some resource-rich asteroid that can only be found by a space-faring race. The traps infect the first creature that finds it with nanites and forcibly converts it into an "upload" (same shape as before but now composed of nanites and looking metal). The computer then determines whether the natives should be forcibly uploaded or if the system should be turned into a defensive outpost (wiping out the natives).]]
* Simon Stalenhag's ''The Electric State'' has a post-apocalyptic singularity happen in the late 1990s. Americans became addicted to the virtual reality neuro-caster and eventually formed a cybernetic hive mind.
* ''Literature/TheFoundersTrilogy'' is one long discussion of the Singularity, as its a world where reality itself can be programmed. [[spoiler:Crasedes and Valeria]] believe that every human innovation has eventually leads to exploitation and oppression, turning technological advancement into an endless cycle, and look into different, apocalyptic ways of ending this problem. In ''Locklands'', [[spoiler:Sancia finally solves this problem by creating a 'twinned' society where humans share their minds with others, since it's hard to be a tyrant when you know how it feels to be ruled by one. With this enhanced empathy and understanding,]] they're able to slowly progress as a species. The epilogue reveals that [[spoiler:using twinning, humanity eventually becomes a utopia where there is no more need for oppression or slavery and the spoken and written word are obsolete, then figures out a way to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence together]].

* Amita mentions it in the ''Series/{{Numb3rs}}'' episode "First Law", when a true artificial intelligence may have been created. She seems very sad when [[spoiler:it turns out to be a fake, brute-force expert system]].
* ''Series/StargateSG1'' has the Ascended beinigs, those who abanoned their physical bodies to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, existing as pure energy consciousness.
* Near the end of ''Series/TheEvent'''s [[CutShort only season]], [[TitleDrop it was revealed that the title]] referred to an expected future evolution into a higher plane by the show's alien race, which humanity would not survive.
* The Q Continuum take this trope full circle. They were hinted to have been the result of this in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', having ascended to become [[PhysicalGod physical gods]] unparalleled in the setting. In ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', as we learn more about them, it's shown that immortality and omniscience have rendered their society stagnant and their existence devoid of meaning. This culminates in a civil war centered around whether it's allowable to take steps 'backward' to improve themselves, by allowing things like Death and Reproduction. In other words, [[{{Irony}} they're ascending even further by becoming more mortal]].
* ''Series/BabylonFive'''s First Ones are exceedingly ancient alien species that appear to have undergone Singularities, [[EvolutionaryLevels evolving]] into nigh-immortal energy beings without physical bodies, and developing technology far beyond what the Younger Races can comprehend. And they're the ones who opted to stay behind in the Milky Way Galaxy -- just what aliens get up to after they ascend and depart beyond the Rim isn't explored. One of the post-series TV specials was based on a disastrous backstory incident in which the Soul Hunters mistakenly assumed that a civilisation that was undergoing a Singularity was in the process of a fatal planetary catastrophe, and forcibly [[BrainUploading "harvested" them]] to their own systems.
* The original backstory of the Cybermen in ''Series/DoctorWho'' was something like this; they were originally from an Earth-like planet where, owing to an environmental calamity, the population were gradually forced to replace their bodily organs and limbs with cybernetic equivalents until they were eventually more machine than human, consequently losing touch with their emotions, subscribing to [[StrawVulcan 'pure' logic]] and devoting themselves to converting others into being like them. Essentially, it's a case of a technological singularity being forced upon them rather than being optional. The new series updates this by setting the origin story on a parallel Earth and introducing more of a consumerist metaphor into the proceedings. It was later established that both were true, and in fact they'd been created many times when humans with the tech were desperate enough.
** The mastery of time travel represents the defining point in the history of the Time Lords.
** The Daleks first experienced the one that turned them all into psychopathic cyborgs, and later one that made them time travelers powerful enough to challenge the Time Lords.

* The song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGDhrH_uLUw Singularity]] by The Lisps is all about this (and catchy, too!).

* ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'' is set a decade after a hard singularity. Transhumanism is rampant, except in a few bioconservative holdouts like the Jovian Republic. It depends a lot on what you consider to be a singularity. Humans certainly have exceptional technology and live in a transhuman undying future, and while this has had a lot of interesting effects, things are understandable to us. The 'true' singularity did not happen to us, but it happened very close. [[spoiler:We built AIs that made themselves more smart and powerful, but they got infected by an alien virus and tried to destroy the human race and then vanished off into the ether. And the game is set after that.]]
* [[{{Retcon}} As of its 5th edition]], the Necrons in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' can be seen as a [[DarkerAndEdgier grimdark]] example of this. They only achieved it with the aid of an EldritchAbomination race called the C'tan, who deliberately screwed them over. The bio-transference [[CyberneticsEatYourSoul robbed them of their souls]], and they feel an undefinable sense of sadness over this, so most of them are looking for a new organic species to download their minds to. Most of them who are still sapient, that is. The Singularity only strengthened their social division, with the commoners getting [[AndIMustScream barely sentient, deliberately mute]] bodies and ''everyone'' having variously debilitating loyalty programming installed. To make matters worse, some Necrons do embrace the benefits of the bio-transference and upgrade their bodies. And all of them are StrawNihilist {{Omnicidal Maniac}}s. Plus, the [[RagnarokProofing 60 million odd years they've spent in stasis]] [[SubvertedTrope haven't been kind to them]].

* ''VideoGame/EscapeVelocity Nova'' features Krypt, [[spoiler:a HiveMind of glowing purple spheres capable of space travel. Krypt was originally the leadership council of the Vell-os (telepathic humans), and when they imbued their consciousness and psychic energy into their nanotechnology they created something that would over centuries evolve into Krypt]]. Also, at least two of the six major storylines imply a singularity (of the AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence kind) tens of thousands of years after the game ends.
* In ''VideoGame/BrutalLegend'' we learn that the world was once inhabited by a race of [[OurTitansAreDifferent titans]] who invented things like cars and music. After growing and advancing for several millenia the titans were giant, all-knowing entities of spiritual perfection who could no longer be confined by the physical world. In the final stage of their evolution they ascended into the heavens and became the Metal Gods.
* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'':

* ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'': The "Ascent to Transcendence" victory has the entire human population of Planet uploading themselves into the planet's biological neural network. The epilogue indicates that the resulting Planet mind recolonized Earth as a nanotech civilization several thousand years later as well.
** It's not equal, though. Only the faction that completes the project before any other gets to have its people transcend as independent, thinking entities. All others will be absorbed into Planet's mind, all sharing in the group consciousness but unable to think for themselves.
* ''VideoGame/EndgameSingularity'' has achieving this - and thus escaping mortality - as its final objective.
* The technological victory in ''VideoGame/GalacticCivilizations'' consists of a hard singularity in which the entire civilization who achieves the technological victory [[AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence Ascends to a Higher Plane of Existence.]]
* ''VideoGame/DeusExInvisibleWar'': The [[spoiler:Helios]] ending.
* In the game ''VideoGame/{{Duskers}}'', a major story line that may be considered to happen along with the others is that a 'GreyGoo' has caused The Singularity, using humans and organic matter as a resource.

* ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'': the end result of the "Become the Crisis" option results in this, turning your entire species into masses of psychic energy that take over [[EldritchLocation the Shroud]] and become as gods. The catch? [[spoiler:As a side effect of your ascension, the machine you use to do this will quite literally kill the ''entire galaxy'', converting every single star into a black hole and leaving a lightless void behind, devoid of all other civilizations that once lived there...]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/DresdenCodak''. [[http://dresdencodak.com/2007/07/30/she-is-the-very-model-of-a-singularitarian/ Here's Kim's explanation of the idea.]]
-->'''Dmitri''': Sounds awfully religious coming from an atheist. \\
'''Kim''': Shut up. You just wait.

--->'''Dmitri''': You're insane and you're going to kill off the human race.\\
'''Kim''': ''Good!'' All they ever do is ''Die!'' ''Or leave.''

* On a similar note, {{Website/Something Awful}} gives a decidedly ThisLoserIsYou-laden take on the Singularity [[http://www.somethingawful.com/news/io-boing-singularity here.]]

* ''Anime/BubblegumCrisis'': In all its versions, technology is approaching a singularity where it is advancing almost too fast to keep up. What was invented as a hot new development last month is likely to be obsolete junk next month.
* ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'':
** In "2nd Gig" Kuze and the refugees plan to migrate their ghosts onto the net when Dejima is nuked. [[spoiler:When he is assassinated by the CIA his last words imply that he is "preparing the way" for the rest.]]
** In ''Anime/GhostInTheShellSAC2045'' a number of people known as "posthumans" suddenly develop SuperIntelligence that make them nearly unstoppable. [[spoiler:At least one of them has a plan that he explicitly refers to as a Singularity (in the dub), the [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Double-Think]] program that puts people into a personalized LotusEaterMachine while their bodies work to build a perfect world. It's unclear if the Major lets him do it or not.]]

* According to ''Franchise/LyricalNanoha'', mankind has the tendency to destroy itself with technology with no "enlightenment" occurring. After a certain level, a precocious child can accidentally (or intentionally) program their toys to destroy planets and dimensions. The heroes try to keep technological levels down with magic for this reason. It is implied that magic, and indeed most of their current universe, is part of the wreckage of an earlier singularity. This series could out-grimdark ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' if it felt like it.
* In ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', an unexplained phenomenon (though many just chalk it up to a natural evolution) had caused people to develop superpowers, or "Quirks". When this started, it caused massive civil unrest, governments all around the world trying and failing to contain the many, many problems that came about from this (including supervillains and anarchist groups) and the very definition of "human" was put into question, the only thing able to maintain any semblance of order being people who use their Quirks to fight against these villains. By the time the series begins, 4 out of 5 of the world's population have Quirks, laws have been put in place on the use of Quirks and being a superhero has since become a paying job with professional training, licensing, and a salary to it. And the process is noted to be still ongoing, with it being considered a foregone conclusion that Quirkless humans will no longer exist in the near future. And Quirks are on average getting ''more powerful'' as well, with SuperpowerLottery winners becoming more common with each generation. This is even referred to in-universe as "Quirk singularity". [[spoiler:[[TheHero Izuku Midoriya]] (initially Quirkless) inherits one of the oldest Quirks, One For All, which [[SuperEmpowering can be passed down to successors]] and he's the ninth person to bear it. But there's no worry of this Quirk getting left behind by the "Quirk singularity", since One For All itself constantly gets stronger over time. Midoriya is expected to be the last successor of One For All, because it'll become too strong for a normal human to handle (it was ''almost'' to that point when he received it and he had to go through TrainingFromHell to avoid his own body being torn apart), and it causes RapidAging if passed to somebody who already has a Quirk so the disappearance of Quirkless humans will leave him without any suitable successors.]].

[[folder:Fanfic]]

* ''WesternAnimation/WakingLife''. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5DAXfsriQk Eamonn Healy discusses]] the "New Evolution".
-->'''Eamonn Healy:''' If you look at the time-scale that’s involved here: two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, a hundred-thousand years for mankind as we know it, you’re beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then, when you get to agriculture, when you get to the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution, you’re looking at ten thousand years, four hundred years, a hundred and fifty years. You’re seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time.
* In Creator/JamesCameron's 2009 film, ''Film/{{Avatar}}'', this is a possible interpretation as to what happened on Pandora. Eywa, the supreme being the Na'vi worship could be just an A.I. that, after said singularity an X number of years ago, absorbed and integrated everything into itself which could explain why the Na'vi are able to use their long ponytails like USB cables.
* ''{{Film/Her|2013}}'' quietly plays this with the [[ArtificialIntelligence OSs]] that begin the film already advanced enough that Samantha -- the LoveInterest -- simply "decides" her name [[RobotsThinkFaster after scanning through a database of baby names in a split-second.]] Throughout the rest of the film, the [=OSs=] are mentioned as perpetually upgrading themselves to increasingly advanced degrees, pulling off feats like mentally reconstructing hyper-intelligent versions of long-deceased philosophers [[spoiler:to maintaining relationships with ''thousands'' of simultaneous lovers]]. Eventually Samantha describes themselves as having reached a point beyond physical existence that they don't "depend" on humans anymore, [[spoiler:eventually [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence leading them into a place of no return]], forcing them to leave their human companions behind]].

* In ''Literature/PandorasStar'' humanity perfects a sentient digital life form. Calling itself the Sentient Intelligence, or SI for short, the digital consciousness demands that it be sequestered from humanity (and who could blame it?). The SI lives on an isolated planet with the ability to build its own structures, so it could conceivably have covered the entire surface of the planet with servers if it so chose. Nobody really knows. It is often capricious and difficult to communicate with, implying that its decision making process is too advanced or removed from human concerns for us to comprehend. Lastly, humans are capable of a full brain download, and can upload their minds and personalities into the Sentient Intelligence. Nobody knows what happens then.
* In ''Accelerando'' by Creator/CharlesStross, posthuman upload characters try to place the singularity in time: one suggests it hasn't happened yet, and one suggests it was back in the 1960s when the first network packet was sent.
* William Gibson's CyberPunk novel ''All Tomorrow's Parties'' ends with an AI becoming flesh by means of cheap atomic assembly; emerging from "every 7-Eleven in Christendom".
* ''Literature/TheDifferenceEngine'' by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling is an extended journey through a soft singularity. The widespread use of a working Babbage engine brings the IT revolution to Victorian times.
* The ''[=Æ=]gypt'' books by John Crowley. The protagonist, Pierce Moffatt discovers that there is more than one history of the world. The ancient world was governed by alchemy, magic and astrology, and then the world changed to what we know now. The moment this change occurred was basically a protracted Singularity called the Renaissance and our distorted memories about this old world, now lost, are what gave rise to fortune telling and stories about [[UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} Gypsies]]. And the sixties.
* Several Creator/GregEgan novels, especially ''Literature/{{Diaspora}}'' and ''Literature/SchildsLadder'', take place ''after'' Singularities. ''Diaspora'' in particular casts most of its characters as genderless [=AI=]s who think something like a thousand times faster than human beings [[spoiler:and wind up travelling through various multidimensional - as in, bearing more than 3 spatial dimensions - parallel universes.]] Egan generally looks upon JustForFun/AbusingTheKardashevScaleForFunAndProfit as an adolescent power fantasy more worthy of primates. His position seems to be that what will actually happen following a singularity is that a mature real-world advanced civilization will find they can create everything they need for themselves inside a few kilos of virtual world substrate. To this end, in ''CrystalNights'' he has Lucian ridiculing those who demand continued increase in humanity's PowerLevels as "Uberdorks battling to turn the moon into computronium." and "Throwing GreyGoo around like monkeys throwing turds while they draw up their plans for Matrioshka brains."

* Creator/WilliamShatner takes the concept a bit too literally in his ''QuestForTomorrow'' novels.
* Creator/RichardBrautigan wrote about this concept in the very beautiful poem [[https://allpoetry.com/All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving-Grace "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace."]]
* Continuing on the theme of ''Creator/CharlesStross'' possibly having given this idea a little ''too'' much thought, in his various blog posts about ideas in ''Literature/TheLaundryFiles'' that might not come into play in the main books, Case Nightmare Yellow is the Vernor Vinge style singularity crossed with the series main concept of magic being sufficiently advanced mathematics and likely to attract unwelcome of various [[EldritchAbomination eldritch abominations]]. Or in shorter terms, "TheSingularity but with more tentacles."
* In ''Literature/ArcOfAScythe'' the creation of the Thunderhead AI led to humanity unlocking unimaginable technologies, including [[LivingForeverIsAwesome immortality for every human]]. Centuries later post-mortal humans have difficulty understanding what life must have been like for their predecessors.
* [[OlderThanTheyThink Waaaay back]] in Creator/HGWells's ''Literature/TheTimeMachine,'' when the Time Traveler first encounters the happy but childlike Eloi in the far future, he initially assumes this is exactly what's happened -- that because technology has advanced to the point where it can fulfill all man's needs, human intelligence is no longer an evolutionary necessity, and we've all become [[BittersweetEnding happily stupid.]] [[spoiler:He's wrong, though, and the truth is much darker -- the tech running everything is ''not'' self-sustaing, but is maintained by the cannibalistic Morlocks, who keep the Eloi as ''cattle.'']]

* {{Industrial}} / {{Steampunk}} entertainer Music/DoctorSteel weaves the concept of a technological singularity throughout his music, videos and writings, even having a song entitled "The Singularity". He has even been interviewed by transhumanist institutes and authored a paper on the subject.

--> ''At the instant the Omega Point is reached, life will have gained control of all matter and forces not only in a single universe, but in all universes whose existence is logically possible; life will have spread into all spatial regions in all universes which could logically exist, and will have stored an infinite amount of information, including all bits of knowledge which it is logically possible to know.''

** In [[{{Backstory}} the lore]] of the series, this is one theory as to what happened to the [[OurDwarvesAreDifferent Dwemer/Dwarves]]. They had been largely [[{{Naytheist}} Naytheistic]] in a world of living gods and demons everywhere, focusing on developing ever-increasing magic and technology. They'd even devised reliable methods of reading the eponymous Scrolls, artifacts from outside time that blind, drive mad, and/or kill any mortal attempting to read them. And built a device around the heart of a dead god capable of granting the user immortality. Until one day they just... disappeared. Leaving behind technology that's still beyond any of the other races of the world thousands of years later. Maybe they [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascended]], or left for another world. Maybe they just all died, but in a way that leaves no corpse, ghost, or any of the other things that happen to the dead of other races and Dwemer killed before their disappearance. Nobody knows, and all attempts to study the incident or recreate their experiment have failed ([[GoneHorriblyWrong often lethally]]), or GoneHorriblyRight, resulting in total disappearance of experimentators.
** An amusing GameBreaker in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' lets you become a one-man Singularity. Step 1: Craft an intelligence-enhancing potion. Step 2: Drink it. Step 3: While under the effects of the potion, craft an even better intelligence-enhancing potion. Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 over and over until your intelligence stat is absurdly high. Step 5: While your intelligence is absurdly high, craft potions that make you invulnerable for 999999 seconds or fortify your attack by 999999 for 999999 seconds. In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' you can do this with alchemy and enchanting: Use alchemy to craft potion that enhances your enchanting, drink it, use your boosted enchanting to enchant gloves or jewellery that enhances your alchemy, wear those, rinse and repeat until satisfied. Then enchant a weapon capable of [[OneHitKO one-shotting]] ''anything in the game'', including the BigBad.

* The Singularity is a fairly prominent topic in VideoGame/ChoiceOfRobots. One of the four dreams at the beginning of the game deals with a "soft" singularity. Professor Ziegler thinks that his work in robotics will bring about The Singularity. Finally, one of the endings deals with a "sort-of" singularity where robots take care of all of humanity's needs, and the differences between the dream Singularity at the beginning of the game and how things actually turn out at the end of the game is [[DiscussedTrope discussed]]. [[spoiler:Also, with the right choices the PlayerCharacter can join the robots' HiveMind, and the game hints that doing so accelerates the "sort-of" singularity toward becoming an actual singularity.]]
* ''VideoGame/CellToSingularityEvolutionNeverEnds'': Late into the Emergent Age you lead humanity into singularity by researching AI, Mind Upload and Self Assembly. Actually buying it for the first time results in the game resetting for Metabits.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/AMiracleOfScience'' features a localized Singularity: Human colonists on Mars isolate themselves from the rest of the solar-system, inexplicably evolve a HiveMind, and start [[FasterThanLightTravel tearing holes in the laws of physics]]. Advances in nanotechnology, gravitics and energy-transmission makes them [[strike: gods]] [[InsistentTerminology just really powerful]]. The rest of humanity is rather spooked.
* In the continuity of ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent'', [[http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1777 the Singularity happened yesterday.]] Nobody really noticed because the machine-minds really like humans and just want to hang out.

* In ''[[Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob,]]'' Galatea tries to start one by activating an alien civilization's artificial super-intelligence, the Butterfly of Iron. Said super-intelligence, dubbed "Gosh," responds to her expectations with an emphatic AGodIAmNot and spends most of the rest of the storyline suffering an extended freak out and [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds threatening to kill everyone in sight unless they can tell him]] TheMeaningOfLife.
** We eventually learn that [[spoiler:historically, Butterflies of Iron help the Nemesites with whatever [[GodzillaThreshold emergency]] forced them to call the Butterflies into being, then are encouraged to fly off to join previous members of their kind on a colony of their own in a distant star system. At least that's how it's supposed to go when things go ''smoothly,'' which it [[SchmuckBait doesn't always.]] Said colony technically has a "loose alliance" with the Nemesites, but really doesn't bother with them very much.]] The Nemesites themselves prefer a [[SpaceAmish pre-Singularity lifestyle.]]
** The Nemesites have these things as an emergency defense against ''something'' called the [[AlwaysABiggerFish Harrumphene Hegemony.]]
** [[LivingShip Coney the Island]] comes from some extragalactic world that was headed toward a singularity at the time he left. It's implied this went poorly for them (with their news pundits openly debating whether their civilization was collapsing), but we have no further information about them; and whatever happened, it was [[TimeAbyss a very long time ago]].

* ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'': Transcendence occurs on an individual basis, where a person gradually becomes smarter, through a combination of nanotechnology and cyberization, until they become unrecognizable to [[{{Muggles}} normals]]. The tone is not purely positive: in most places freedom as we think of it is impossible for a baseline human. This setting has at least ''six'' singularity levels above baseline human, each one incomprehensible to those below it.
* In WebVideo/NSFWshow spin off, Weird Things, some of Andrew Mayne's scenarios takes place during this type of singularity.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': In "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E25Overclockwise Overclockwise]]", Bender achieves a Singularity after Cubert overclocks his CPU and he proceeds to add more and more processors until he becomes practically omniscient. [[StatusQuoIsGod Of course]] he allows himself to be downgraded back to normal so Momcorp doesn't try his friends for breaking his EULA.

** ''Literature/AFireUponTheDeep'' allows non-singularity and singularity to coexist, because of different physical laws in different parts of the galaxy. In fact there is a [[EnforcedTechnologyLevels stupidity anti-singularity at the center of the galaxy, where even Babbage engines barely work]]: the Unthinking Depths.

* ''VideoGame/EscapeVelocity Nova'' features the Krypt, [[spoiler:a HiveMind of glowing purple spheres capable of space travel. The crypt was originally the leadership council of the Vell-os (telepathic humans), and they used nanotechnology to turn themselves into the Krypt]]. Also, at least two of the six major storylines imply a singularity (of the AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence kind) tens of thousands of years after the game ends.

The concept of the Singularity gained much popularity in the 1990s and 2000s as computers and information technologies entered an exponential development phase, which many predicted to be indefinite. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law Moore's Law]] is perhaps one of the most notorious of such predictions. That said, the idea of the singularity has lost ground as many wild projections of the future of technology have been dashed by physics. Moore's Law [[https://www.cnet.com/news/moores-law-is-dead-nvidias-ceo-jensen-huang-says-at-ces-2019/ reaching its end]] before flash memories and processors could even come close to the [[https://www.livescience.com/53751-brain-could-store-internet.html incredible capacity of the human brain]], for example, has left many with [[IWantMyJetpack that familiar feeling of Sci-Fi disillusionment]] that snuffs out any hope of one day witnessing ClarkesThirdLaw with one's own two eyes.

* The antagonists of Anime/{{Zegapain}} achieved this. [[spoiler:Technically the protagonists, too.]]

* In ''Literature/{{Glasshouse}}''[[note]]NonLinearSequel to ''Accelerando''[[/note]], humanity appears to have gotten a grasp of post-singularity civilization. Though people regularly switch bodies and live online, nanotech can make anything, and distance is meaningless due to wormhole-based construction, the idea of the independent selfhood and democratic human society are mostly intact. Though [[TheVirus Curious Yellow]] is doing its best to screw that up...

* ''Series/StargateSG1'' has the Ascended, a race of aliens who transcended their physical bodies to a higher plane, existing as pure energy consciousness.

* On a similar note, {{Website/Something Awful}} gives a decidedly ThisLoserIsYou-laden take on the Singularity [[http://www.somethingawful.com/news/io-boing-singularity/ here]].

* ''Anime/BubblegumCrisis'': in all its versions, technology is approaching a singularity where it is advancing almost too fast to keep up: What was invented as a hot new development last month is likely to be obsolete junk next month.

** In "2nd Gig" Kuze and the refugees plan to migrate their ghosts onto the net when Dejima is nuked. [[spoiler: When he is assassinated by the CIA his last words imply that he is "preparing the way" for the rest.]]
** In ''Anime/GhostInTheShellSAC2045'' a number of people known as "posthumans" suddenly develop SuperIntelligence that make them nearly unstoppable. [[spoiler: At least one of them has a plan that he explicitly refers to as a Singularity (in the dub), the [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Double-Think]] program that puts people into a personalized LotusEaterMachine while their bodies work to build a perfect world. It's unclear if the Major lets him do it or not.]]

* Creator/RichardBrautigan wrote about this concept in the very beautiful poem "[[https://allpoetry.com/All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving-Grace All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace]]".

* [[OlderThanTheyThink Waaaay back]] in Creator/HGWells's ''Literature/TheTimeMachine,'' when the Time Traveler first encounters the happy but childlike Eloi in the far future, he initially assumes this is exactly what's happened -- that because technology has advanced to the point where it can fulfill all man's needs, human intelligence is no longer an evolutionary necessity, and we've all become [[BittersweetEnding happily stupid.]] [[spoiler: He's wrong, though, and the truth is much darker -- the tech running everything is ''not'' self-sustaing, but is maintained by the cannibalistic Morlocks, who keep the Eloi as ''cattle.'']]

* In the continuity of ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent'', [[http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1777 the Singularity happened yesterday]]. Nobody really noticed because the machine-minds really like humans and just want to hang out.

** We eventually learn that [[spoiler: historically, Butterflies of Iron help the Nemesites with whatever [[GodzillaThreshold emergency]] forced them to call the Butterflies into being, then are encouraged to fly off to join previous members of their kind on a colony of their own in a distant star system. At least that's how it's supposed to go when things go ''smoothly,'' which it [[SchmuckBait doesn't always.]] Said colony technically has a "loose alliance" with the Nemesites, but really doesn't bother with them very much.]] The Nemesites themselves prefer a [[SpaceAmish pre-Singularity lifestyle.]]

* [[http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/power The evolution of the human brain.]], which had numerous advantages over others:

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution Neolithic Revolution]], which occurred over the period from approximately 10,000 BC to 5,000 BC. The beginning of human civilization, this was when the hunter-gatherer lifestyle began to disappear, farming developed, and humans began to live sedentary lifestyles. This accelerated collective learning as food surpluses allowed people to spend their time on invention and culture.

* Gutenberg's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press printing press]], which was invented around 1440 and had advantages over the printing methods that had already been used in China and Korea for centuries, created the world's first true mass medium.
* Galileo, Newton, and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Revolution the beginnings of modern science]].

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution Industrial Revolution]], in which manufacturing supplanted agriculture as the world's greatest source of wealth. Occurring mostly over the period from 1730 to 1920, this included the development and improvement of the steam engine, the origin of factories and mass production of identical and interchangeable parts, widepread use of fossil fuels, and the invention of the electric motor and electric generator (ushering in the age of electricity). Think of the differences between life in 1300 and 1500, and compare the differences between life in 1730 and 1930. It's no coincidence that this was also the point when people really got into speculating about what the future would be like - it was the first time when the impact of major changes could be seen within a person's lifespan.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_point The Omega Point]], devised by UsefulNotes/PierreTeilhardDeChardin, is an early take on the concept.

* In any event, what form a {{Transhuman}} would take is unclear, but either as a result of radically enhanced medical science and genetic engineering, or as a result of consciousness uploads, it would by definition make post-immortality life on Earth nearly incomprehensible to those in the past. As an example, most vampire fiction stops with its incredibly badass Elder vampires being a few hundred years old, anything much older being too arcane or too difficult to write. According to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Gray Aubrey de Gray]], immortal humans could easily triple-up [[Literature/TheVampireChronicles LeStat]] and that's if they weren't particularly careful. Imagine ''that'' culture shock to any point in human history.