“Vernor Steffen Vinge (pronounced VIN-jee, rhyming with 'stingy') (born February 10, 1944) is a mathematician, computer scientist and science fiction author who is best known for his Hugo award-winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep, and for his 1993 essay “The Technological Singularity”, in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences. ” From Vernor_Vinge

• author of True Names, Nature, Bloody in Tooth and Claw, Fire in the Deep, described The Singularity, etc+
• slides form a talk “imagining the future” http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/npaci.html
• a short story in sensor nation “synthetic serendipity http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jul04/0704far.html
• “Rainbows End” > http://vrinimi.org/rainbowsend.html
• … and what about the Tynes ?+