The Sun pours energy into space in all directions, and Earth is just a dot which intercepts far less than 1% of that. You can build giant solar panels in space and then beam the collected energy elsewhere in the solar system, or just store it in batteries and physically move the batteries to where they are needed. Also, a post-singularity civilization can surely build fusion reactors as a mobile self-contained power source. A "Bussard ramjet" model of interstellar craft can fuel its fusion reactor while in flight by magnetically collecting the interstellar atoms in its path, and then refuel at a planetary system e.g. by tapping the atmospheres of gas giants.
Earth civilization currently uses an extremely limited range of resources - the tiny fraction of solar output which happens to reach this dot in space, and the tiny fraction of the Earth's mineral volume lying within a few kilometers of its surface. You can already multiply this by some large factor, just by building solar panels in space and by mining asteroids. If we talk about more radical schemes... one common idea is to dismantle whole planets and completely surround a star with solar collectors. Even a mildly expansive civilization could give rise to an ever-increasing number of settled solar systems, with some fraction of them completely encircling their central star in this way. Eventually I would expect experiments on individual stars - mining the stellar atmosphere by stimulating solar flare production, attempts to form metastable plasma structures that can survive within the star, who knows.
At the same time, there is no law of nature to keep human and nonhuman intelligence operating solely at human scales of space and time. There should be intelligent beings which are smaller and faster, and others which are bigger and slower. The "body" of an intelligent being could be a network of sensorimotor devices of arbitrarily large spatial extent. The speed of light doesn't provide an upper limit on size, just an upper limit on the "mind-body clock speed" of such a being (e.g. the minimum time it takes a signal to come in from the outermost periphery and for a response to be sent back out: you stubbed your toe, withdraw it; your sensor-web near Venus is needed elsewhere, relocate it).
In principle it is possible for a post-singularity civilization to hang back from, and completely renounce, such expansions and transformations, in all possible forms. But is it likely?
You know, Dyson spheres and all that stuff, they are utterly unfeasible: require far too much material, more than there is in the entire Solar System, not to mention maintenance and transportation costs. Same, at a lower scale, with building solar panels in space. I put the viability of all those awesome dreams as anything other than wishful thinking in question, Show me numbers.
Now, that we develop complete and utter mastery of this planet. Within the limits of what power renewable energies can offer: even the constant, titanic calculations and information flows that would require would require an awful lot of power, nevermind actually doing stuff to things with it.
It was Yudkowsky's Fun Theory sequence that inspired me to undertake the work of writing a novel on a singularitarian society... however, there are gaps I need to fill, and I need all the help I can get. It's mostly book recommendations that I'm asking for.
One of the things I'd like to tackle in it would be the interactions between the modern, geeky Singularitarianisms, and Marxism, which I hold to be somewhat prototypical in that sense, as well as other utopisms. And contrasting them with more down-to-earth ideologies and attitudes, by examining the seriously dangerous bumps of the technological point of transition between "baseline" and "singularity". But I need to do a lot of research before I'm able to write anything good: if I'm not going to have any original ideas, at least I'd like to serve my readers with a collection of well-researched. solid ones.
So I'd like to have everything that is worth reading about the Singularity, specifically the Revolution it entails (in one way or another) and the social aftermath. I'm particularly interested in the consequences of the lag of the spread of the technology from the wealthy to the baselines, and the potential for baselines oppression and other forms of continuation of current forms of social imbalances, as well as suboptimal distribution of wealth. After all, according to many authors, we've had the means to end war, poverty and famine, and most infectious diseases, since the sixties, and it's just our irrational methods of wealth distribution That is, supposing the commonly alleged ideal of total lifespan and material welfare maximization for all humanity is what actually drives the way things are done. But even with other, different premises and axioms, there's much that can be improved and isn't, thanks to basic human irrationality, which is what we combat here.
Also, yes, this post makes my political leanings fairly clear, but I'm open to alternative viewpoints and actively seek them. I also don't intend to write any propaganda, as such. Just to examine ideas, and scenarios, for the sake of writing a compelling story, with wide audience appeal. The idea is to raise awareness of the Singularity as something rather imminent ("Summer's Coming"), and cause (or at least help prepare) normal people to question the wonders and dangers thereof, rationally.
It's a frighteningly ambitious, long-term challenge, I am terribly aware of that. And the first thing I'll need to read is a style-book, to correct my horrendous grasp of standard acceptable writing (and not seem arrogant by doing anything else), so please feel free to recommend as many books and blog articles and other material as you like. I'll take my time going though it all.