Sometime in the next few years or decades, humanity will become capable of breaking the upper limit on intelligence that has held since the rise of the human species. We will become capable of technologically creating smarter-than-human intelligence - perhaps through enhancement of the human brain, direct links between computers and the brain, or Artificial Intelligence. This event is called the "Singularity" by analogy with the singularity at the center of a black hole - just as our current model of physics breaks down when it attempts to describe the center of a black hole, our model of the future breaks down once the future contains smarter-than-human minds. Since technology is itself the product of intelligence, the Singularity is an effect that snowballs once it occurs - the first smart minds can create smarter minds, and smarter minds can produce still smarter minds.
http://www.singinst.org/
I've been reading a lot about this lately, and with the recent news (nerve cells communicating with silicon chips), it seems we are getting closer and closer.
Some people call it the end of history. The way I look at it, the machines will either enslave us, kill us, or satisfy every need we could ever imagine, the possibilities are endless.