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And you think this power would be mass marketed to the demise of all governments in the world. It ain't gonna happen. People in power now have too much invested to simply allow it to dissolve away.

I said the Singularity enthusiasts believe that. But they have a point. It will be impossible for the gov't to keep the knowledge secret. Once anybody has the knowledge- everybody will have it. It's kind of like the genie in the bottle. They won't be able to use the genie without letting the genie out. Even people sworn to secrecy to work on these things would be overly tempted by the possibilities of being able to use this technology themselves. All it would take is one leak, one hacker, one corporate spy and that's it.

I'd say first we have to get to that point to even worry about that puzzle.

You want to read a little more about it, do a google for "Singularity" and in particular a guy called Eliezer Yudkowsky- he's written extensively on it- as a matter of fact, he thinks it should be the goal of humanity to get to the Singularity as quickly as possible because all problems will be solved at that point and every day we waste is another day we suffer needlessly. It's a little bit out there, but he's obviously an intelligent guy and it's interesting reading. If you search for him, you'll probably come across a piece he wrote called "The Low Beyond- Staring into the Singularity". That's a pretty good place to start.

Also, a book that provides a pretty good overview of the subject (the author is just collecting the ideas out there- not his original ones) is called "The Spike" and I believe the author's name is Damien Broderick. Probably not worth the hardcover price, but if you can find it in paperback, it's food for thought.

Oh and it would be totally remiss of me not to mention Vernor Vinge- he coined the phrase Singularity for this event and has also written a lot on the subject.