The singularity may be a fluke of observation bias, it is very well possible that because you are always at the forefront of technological development when you are alive (or you'd be living in the past) you perceive this tremendous advance during your lifetime, leading you to conclude that pretty soon we'll 'take off'.
The singularity has been nicknamed 'the rapture of the nerds'.
As soon as old media will get napstered and Culture will become impossible to be manipulated, and, as soon as we uploaded ourselves completely to the web --- we will have a new digital universe assuring parallel existences and a gateway to the 'old' biological life.
"The world will be changed by the ability to routinely read genetic sequences into computing systems and then store, replicate, alter and insert them back into living cells."
