Off and on for the past six months I've been trying to relocate a quote from Ray Kurzweil, the father of the Singularity. I have nothing against the Singularity, but I'm not convinced that if it arrives it will do so as a surprise, changing everything in its path. It may simply slowly, but not secretively, creep up on us so that when we realize that it's here we'll actually already feel quite comfortable with it. But more than that, I'm far from sure that our lives will really be that different from before it arrived. Which is why I devoted quite a bit of effort trying to refind a quote from Kurzweil.

I have a clear recollection of reading, somewhere, that Kurzweil was once asked what the position of women would be in the Singularity, and that he replied that somebody was still going to have to do the ironing. I don't think I made that up. (I'd be happy to take credit for it, but I need it to be authentic.) But try as I might, using numerous search terms, I couldn't seem to find the quote. But of course this was the sort of quote that I'd have saved to myself, and I'd have saved it in my gmail. And of course if this was what I'd done, all I'd have to do is run a search for Kurzweil in my gmail.

Which I did - and sort of found what I was looking for. I found that on July 13, 2009 I'd quoted a paragraph from the Wikipedia entry on Kurzweil. And that raises a different, rather fascinating question. Taking more time than this probably deserves, I found that the particular paragraph that I'd saved appeared in the entry on Kurzweil only between July 11-13, 2009. In other words, I succeeded in finding it, almost totally by chance, during an incredibly slim window of opportunity. And it seems that quote really was too good to be true.