You may never have heard of the Singularity, but many scientists call its advent “inevitable,” and it has the potential, some would even say the promise, to deliver the human race to immortality. In order to understand how we can become immortal via the Singularity, we first have to understand what it is.

According to Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near and co-founder of Singularity University: “The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today — the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity.”

To put this in layperson’s terms, the Singularity is the exact moment in time when computers, in all their incarnations, become smarter than people. When this occurs, computers will be able to grow exponentially upon themselves and reproduce themselves, and their intelligence, billions of times faster than human intelligence can grow. […]