Jon Udell: Accelerating Change 2005: "Vinge distinguishes between two scenarios he calls 'soft take-off' and 'hard take-off.' In a soft take-off, the singularity occurs gradually enough so that humanity has a chance to adjust to the changes. This, everyone agreed, is what we want. A hard take-off, by contrast, is a near-instantaneous and cataclysmic event, like Vonnegut's ice-nine or the awakening of SkyNet in Terminator. This, everyone agreed, is what we probably don't want -- not that we'll have a choice, mind you. In either case, life on the other side will make no sense to beings left behind. If you were to bring Mark Twain forward from the mid-1800s to the present day, Vinge said, you could explain the current situation to him in an afternoon, and he'd very much enjoy what he would learn. But nothing at all could be made intelligible to a goldfish. That's us: just goldfish to the post-human super-intelligences."