Once one realizes that the notion of human intelligence encompasses every useful skill that we perform with our brains, one begins to see that intelligence is the reason that human beings have taken control of much of the planet’s land mass, constructed skyscrapers, developed economies, and invented nuclear weapons. The speed of the human takeover of earth was startling relative to the slow changes that came before it. In just a few tens of thousands of years, humans took control of a 4-billion-year-old biosphere. The effect of human intelligence on many other species living on this planet has been fatal: Human beings have caused the extinction of millions of other species, primarily because of the power that our intelligence brings. This historical perspective is key to understanding what the technological singularity is about. It isn’t about shiny new gadgets or mundane, Jetsons-style futurism where humans live the same lifestyle as today but against a flashier background. It is about the next iteration of the most powerful force in the universe: intelligence. The correct metaphor for the singularity is not the image of a shiny, chrome-plated robot, it is the leap from wild animals to human societies, but this time with humans as the starting point.