It is probably not farfetched to say that "The Singularity Is Near:
When Humans Transcend Biology" is the Singularitarian Bible. It is
the one book that anyone interested (together with everyone not
interested) in the Technological Singularity must read. No subject,
field or issue is too big to fit within this book's subject matter.
It examines the cutting edge research in and the implications
thereof physics, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, computer
science, biotechnology and genetics, artificial intelligence and
robotics, nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing, nuclear
physics and quantum theory, evolutionary theory and sociology,
astronomy and cosmology, economics, politics and philosophy.
This book is meticulously researched and contains over 100 pages of
scientific notes and references. It also contains a whole chapter
of criticisms which are addressed in detail by Ray Kurzweil. If it
does have a weakness it has to be the fact that it is so
conceptually and theoretically advanced, so breathtakingly
far-sighted and so exhaustively precise in its most minute
cutting-edge scientific detail that readers may find it at times
hard to follow. (I know I did) At the same time the book is
undoubtedly successful at communicating "the singularity is near"
message to a broad non-scientific readership.