The Singularity will end the human race as you know it...
Let me begin by saying...Raymond Kurzweil is not just some dingbat living on the Vegas strip. If you polled all of the worlds scientists and asked them who the top scientist in the world is, more likely than not Mr. Kurzweil would be at the top of the list.
"The Singularity" is a common term among theoretical physicists. Kurzweil co-opts the term for his own purpose to mean the point in time where artificial intelligence starts exceeding human intelligence. Thereafter, AI takes over its own programming and, being so powerful, does a better and better job of it. Because things are already moving so fast today, the accelerating rate of change means that "The Singularity" is closer than even optimists might imagine. He projects it to occur somewhere around 2045. Afterwards, nothing will ever again be the same.
In physics, unimaginable things start happening at singularity points, like energy explosions within black holes. Following Kurzweil's Singularity, the most garish science fiction fantasies start becoming commonplace. The combination of genetics, nanotechnology and robotics - which he refers to collectively as GNR - will transform all aspects of human existence. He believes, for example, that nanobots released into a person's bloodstream, will facilitate a comprehensive (that is to say, 100%) map of that person, including genetic code and nervous system, that can be uploaded and downloaded at will onto new "substrates". In other words, robotic copies of human beings - body, mind, memories, and (one presumes) soul - can be made that will appear indistinguishable from the originals. And for that matter, those originals themselves can be re-shaped at will, giving us all the opportunity to become brilliant, strong, happy, and beautiful.
Kurzweil tells us that artificial circuits replicating themselves at a molecular level will merge with the biological circuits that constitute our nervous systems, giving rise an "enhanced" human super-intelligence. Once this starts happening, what we now call the Internet will in effect become telepathic, giving these enhanced humans instantaneous access to all available knowledge and information as they fashion their brave new world. You see how explosive this gets? And it's just the beginning.
Once the process gets underway, the evolving super-intelligence keeps expanding until it permeates the entire planet and, still accelerating, eventually the universe. Kurzweil suggests that movement though time-space "wormholes" should one day facilitate rapid travel beyond our own galaxy, taking the process literally everywhere.
If live long enough (2045-ish) to see the Singularity happen in full, you could live forever, you could be young forever. Even on another planet and/or in another galaxy. And this reality could be closer than you can imagine.