[michaelgburton]

The singularity in this context refers to the point beyond which predictions will fail because we cannot possibly foresee the consequences of certain technological changes.

There's nothing historical about it; it came about as a result of a few different science writers looking into the future and wondering how we keep up in an accelerating technological context.

I actually agree that it's become something else, but the origin of the term was what I was correcting, and its origin isn't something woo-woo, it's firmly based in scientific speculation.

[zaphar]

Unfortunately as someone of the christian faith I have first hand experience that you can not control someone else's use of language. Whether that is the meaning it was originally intended to convey or not that is the meaning that it conveys now. The best you can do here is to say: "That does not represent my own personal definition despite the zeitgeist coopting it to mean something else".

[simiones]

Even in its original context, it's still a bunch of woo-woo. The core idea, that creating a technology that can improve technology will lead to exponential technological advancement that can be modeled as a mathematical singularity, is very hand-wavy and silly on its face.

[michaelgburton]

It's been very easy to observe acceleration in progress over time, and there's a natural question that emerges: Will we reach a point where people can't keep up?

Nothing hand-wavy or silly there. And the discussion of the topic as it was formed in the second half of the 20th century was pretty carefully couched in terms of what-ifs and conservative projection.