Ray Kurzweil — inventor of things like machines that turn text into speech — has popularized the idea that we are rapidly approaching “the singularity,” the point at which machines not only think for themselves but develop intellectually faster than we.

At that point, maybe we no longer talk about “human history.” It will be “machine progress,” with us along for the ride — if machines keep us around. Maybe they’ll keep us in a zoo, like we do with our monkey ancestors.