DRAFT: When did the Singularity happen?

The quote in that last post was from a book called Accelerando (Singularity) by Charlie Stross.  As you might imagine from the title, the book is about the moment when humans cease to be the most intelligent life form on the planet.  Or, that's the short version at least.  Because the more you dig into this idea (which I admit to being perhaps unhealthily obsessed with) the longer it gets.  Maybe the easiest way to see this is to ask yourself how exactly you will know when the singularity has happened?  It sounds like it would be so obvious, right?  I mean, it's a singularity after all; who is going to remain unaware that they've just fallen into a black hole?

Our culture, being deeply Christian at base, imagines everything in terms of apocalypse.  We have spent at least 2000 years now scared stiff that the world is going to end because we are sinners.  Pop culture's treatment of the singularity is no different; it's just the Rapture for nerds.  The apocalypse, you'll note, never happens gradually.  The end of times might sneak up on you, or at least on those sinners who will be swept away by it, but when it finally happens there will be fire and brimstone type disasters accompanied by trumpets -- you're gonna fuckin' know it. You're not going to have to ask your neighbor whether that's the end of the fireworks display, and do you think they'll do an encore?

Now, it doesn't take a whole lot of philosophical or scientific reflection to realize that the Hollywood version of the singularity makes about as much sense as their version of Catholicism (aka Scientology).   But realizing that the Singularity won't have an the obvious climax of Tom Cruise film is only the first step in a long chain that unravels the entire concept.  If we define the Singularity as the moment when some new "artificial" intelligence that operates with greater speed arises on earth, then the Singularity has already happened, and is happening, and will continue to happen.  Life, humans, corporations, robots, maybe bacteriophages, all qualify.  The Singularity is actually a whole set of nested singularities, so many limits or phase transitions that divide one type of intelligence from another.