Kurzweil thinks that technological progress is occurring at an exponential rate (as opposed to the linear rate our myopia convinces us of). Accordingly, he predicts that in the future, we will go through a series of technological revolutions that few envision today: Genetic, Nanotechnology, and Robotic Revolutions.
After the Robotic revolution, machines will have become billions of times more intelligent than humans — this will happen by 2045. Humans will merge with machines. The next epoch will be that the entire universe will become a sort of “intelligence” — harnessed for information (storage and processing). For him, the Singularity refers to this entire revolution and then the life and universe that lies beyond.
He cites a ton of research in neuroscience, computer science, genetics, AI, psychology and other fields as: 1) proof that the rate of progress is accelerating; and 2) techniques by which we might create machines more intelligent than humans (he thinks brain emulation will get us to human-level at least, and then let’s go from there).