Our technologies are becoming more powerful with each passing year, and with an eerie regularity. This has led some to believe that we’re hurtling towards a sort of nexus point, the so-called Singularity. Looking to explore this possibility, director Doug Wolens recently put together a fascinating documentary on the subject. We spoke to him to learn more about his new film — and what the Singularity could bring.

Doug Wolens: I first learned about the Singularity in 2000 while on the road self-distributing my last documentary, Butterfly. While flying to the New York City screenings of Butterfly, I read a three-line blurb by Ray Kurzweil in a magazine called Business 2.0.

He wrote about the exponential growth of technology and that one day computers could be as smart as people. The idea fascinated me. As a kid growing up in the 60’s, I watched the Apollo flights and Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon; I was taught that science could solve all our problems. […]