Comment by dwohnitmok

Vinge addresses this in the linked article.

> Stan Ulam [28] paraphrased John von Neumann as saying:

>> One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.

> Von Neumann even uses the term singularity, though it appears he is thinking of normal progress, not the creation of superhuman intellect. (For me, the superhumanity is the essence of the Singularity. Without that we would get a glut of technical riches, never properly absorbed (see [25]).)

which hews much closer to how people who are fans of the term use it (the Singularity explicitly refers to the rise of superhumanly intelligent systems, not just the progress of technology overall).