Phil,

We expect pictures - lots and lots of pictures.

One additional question I hope you will consider is: What do you anticipate the next significant advancement toward achieving the Singularity to be?

Good luck in Baghdad On The Bay. :)

Here are my answers, to prime the pipeline:

- I am attending to help me decide on a direction for my entrepreneurial future. Current ideas are in the fields of social networks and high performance computing. I'll be there for ideas, creative energy and people.

- I believe I might be able to help in whatever small degree in promoting earlier development of beneficial technologies.

- The one thing I wish people understood is that a technological Singularity is imminent in 15-20 years and that we have to focus on the right mix of technologies and social structures to survive hyper accelerated change.

- My greatest fear is that offense will be easier than defense.

"Off to a Great Start"

...so it was a soft take off, huh?

Answering your questions as if I were there:

Everyone who understands the significance of the Singularity is interested in the Singularity.

Imagine an illiterate culture that's exposed to writing for the first time. They see the implications and want to speed the adaptation of writing for their own society.

My role, in part, is to write about it. This means I have to keep up with the writings of others and contribute as I can to the conversation.

Also, I see my role as, I hope, a historian of sorts. By living to see it, and living through it, I'll have a unique perspective for those who come along post-Singularity.

I wish others understood why Singularitarians believe that this event is imminent. It's not that one thing will lead to this event, or that there is just one path to this event. Rather, many, many things are bringing this about and there is more than one way it can happen. Aside from extinction, there seems to be little that we could do to avoid it.

My greatest hope is that humanity will overcome the hatreds and prejudices that have held us back. I hope that we'll live healthy productive and exciting lives post-Singularity.

My greatest apprehension is extinction of all that we care about. This could happen via hard take-off of AI that sees us as competitors or a lessor species.