I just read Imagining the Google future (thanx, Slashdot). This is a set of four different future scenarios for Google. The Ray Kurzweil one is shocking - his scenario is cheekily titled: ‘(Circa 2105): Google is God’. What is even more shocking is that it’s difficult not to believe him. Read his books - The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence for more information.