“In Radical Evolution, the journalist Joel Garreau’s 2005 book about new technologies and human enhancement, Garreau visits Michael Goldblatt, a former director of the Defense Sciences Office, a unit of DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Goldblatt shows Garreau two quotes from his files, from different sources but the same date: October 9, 1903. One, from an article in The New York Times, suggests that a flying machine ‘might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians in from one million to ten million years.’ The other, from the diary of Orville Wright, says, ‘We started assembly today.’”

- Dan Halpern’s “Are You Ready For The Singularity?” in GQ Magazine.