We've talked about the Singularity and Kurzweil's predictions here before, but all I know about Fresco I got from reading a wikipedia article just now. Caveat wiki. It's enough to ask the title question: I think Kurzweil is predictive, while Fresco is prescriptive. If Kurzweil is right, the Singularity is the future that will happen to us, while Fresco wants us to build the kind of future he envisions.

Still, I can say that what I know of Fresco's future sounds more like a place I'd like to live. Or retire...that's the thing about such designed and planned communities, they turn out to be Rossmoor. Still, what's not to like about "a future without poverty, crime, war, corruption, or waste"?

That what that world won't have, but I'm not clear on what it would have. I read about objections that Fresco perpetuates a divide between science on the one hand, and "the finer things in life"--art and culture--on the other. I would not want to live in world without culture, but who would? So I can shrug and call it unlikely that that kind of world could ever exist, because it seems so at odds with human life. If Fresco's ideas are really that cold and "scientistic", it'll never happen in the real world. The human way is to harvest the good ideas from utopian ideas and chuck the rest.

Speaking of cold and scientistic, hey, what about that Singularity and the infinite resources and knowledge and all around godlike powers? That's a heady brew, and I'm not sure I'd want to live in a world that so thoroughly indulged the classic adolescent power fantasy. Sure, I could handle it, it's all you other jerks who'd spoil it for me ;-) Some great science fiction novels have been inspired by the idea, so for that I'm grateful.

The Singularity is supposed to happen to us as the inevitable convergence of all the trend lines on infinity or zero (whichever one makes the best utopia), all at once some time in the mid 21st. It's sometimes portrayed as a quantum apotheosis, and I have to ask: Have Singularists never heard of the Uncertainty Principle? The fact that we're talking about it guarantees it can't happen.

Obvious: Investor hears all this Singularity talk, buys it, and decides to back a winner. He goes looking for tributary threads leading to Singularity, dumps money on somebody, and accelerates one line of development. It may come in too early, or another promising line of inquiry doesn't get funded because of the conscious choice.

The best you can get under these circumstances is more of a keyhole than a geometric point, and certainly bigger than the eye of a needle. A singularity with a circular probability of error. Right....

So sure, the future will surprise us, and I think I prefer that too (be careful what you ask for, alacaray). The future may not be entirely under our control, but we can influence it, ER (and both visions swear they'll ameliorate the gloomy future you foresee). But I don't think that either Fresco or Kurzweil is advocating Soviet-style central planning, TB. That's a hammer-and-nail thing, and, with all due respect, don't quit your day job for a career as a futurist.

Thanks for bringing it up, Jeff. You're right about the topic being in the spirit of the Zone, though I wouldn't say there has ever been a consensus about the inevitability of a ‘better future through technology'. I can't imagine that kind of intellectual lockstep at the one place where I know I can always get an argument on any subject under the sun.