Ian Morris on "why the west rules", which seems to be a provocative title for an interesting book on historical geographical trends and their projection into the future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvkHiL-H2io. He starts talking about the future at minute 27 and basically concludes that a singularity scenario is one of two possibilities for the 21st century, the other being collapse. Nothing new, but encouraging to see this increasingly in the mainstream.
I wonder whether a continual rear-guard action forestalling collapse would be considered "business as usual" or not. I suspect yes, and that someone sufficiently cynical would say this is what is already happening.
I can imagine alternatives that can't be considered either singularity, collapse, or business-as-usual -- a resource-based economy, for example -- but I don't consider them any more likely than either of the first two. Political trends strongly support collapse.