ABSTRACT
The first to use a specific mathematical term Singularity in his futurist reasoning was John von Neumann. In 1958, he said to his colleague Stanislaw Ulam: “The ever-accelerating progress of technology and changes in mode of human life…gives an appearance of approaching some essential Singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue” (quoted from [Eden et al. 2012: 4]). Later on, the exotic concept appeared in some Russian history books in a similar context, although with contrasting interpretations [Porshnev 1966; Dyakonov 1994].
