Sure, but that's not to discount the main point, which is that singularitarians arbitrarily privilege the importance of computational advancement over the real

Sure, but that's not to discount the main point, which is that singularitarians arbitrarily privilege the importance of computational advancement over the real world. This is probably because computers are the easiest to draw the exponential advancement graph for (and because singularitarians hardly ever leave the basement). Vernor Vinge predicted the singularity not before 2005 and not after 2030. Will we have crazysauce computers by then? Definitely. Will anything else in the world have caught up with the pace at which we apply transistors to wafers? Probably not. One of Sterling's points is that the singularity is like dot-com startups in the 1990s: it doesn't have a business model. I think it would be right to say that it doesn't scale, either; there are too many other bottlenecks in the system where we wave our hands and say something about just throwing more metal at it. Seriously, though, check out the talk, it's quite good.