Singularity

Von Neumann was deeply aware of the accelerating pace of progress and the profound implications of this progression for humanity's future, which brings us to the fifth key idea of the information age. A year after von Neumann's death in 1957, fellow mathematician Stan Ulam quoted von Neumann as having said that "the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life give

the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." This is the first known use of the word "singularity" in the context of human history.