Singularity Update

This forward by Ray Kurzweil to The Intelligent Universe (by James Gardner) gives a great summary of the consequences of the Law of Accelerating Returns, and how it could lead to saturating the universe with intelligence:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=1%23691

"The explosive nature of exponential growth means it may only take a quarter of a millennium to go from sending messages on horseback to saturating the matter and energy in our solar system with sublimely intelligent processes."

(It's a long article, but most of the page is reader commentary after the article.)