I would like feedback on my recent blog post:

http://www.kmeme.com/2010/07/singularity-is-always-steep.html

It's simplistic for this crowd, but something that bothered me for a while. When I first saw Kurzweil speak in person (GDC 2008) he of course showed both linear and log scale plots. But I always thought the log scale plots were just a convenient way to fit more on the screen, that the "real" behavior was more like the linear scale plot, building to a dramatic steep slope in the coming years.

Instead I now believe in many cases the log plot is closer to "the real thing" or at least how we perceive that thing. For example in the post I talk about computational capacity. I believe the exponential increase is capacity translates into a perceived linear increase in utility. A computer twice as fast is only incrementally more useful, in terms of what applications can be run. This holds true today and will hold true in 2040 or any other year.

Therefore computational utility is incrementally increasing today and will be incrementally increasing in 2040 or any future date. It's not building to some dramatic peak.

None of this says anything against the possibility of a Singularity. If you pass the threshold where machine intelligence is possible, you pass it, whatever the perceived rate of progress at the time.