It did take more than a few decades to design, however. I wouldn't really expect a new model to ship inside of forty years. At best, that's like expecting the next version of Windows to ship in the next three hours.

My theory of the singularity is that the concept is so popular these days precisely because (a) we've passed a critical knowledge threshold: A significant number of the best-educated people in the world have become aware that not only is a giant collection of self-replicating simple machines possible, it is old news -- billions-of-years-old news. But, (b), the majority of humanity still does not understand that. It is the very definition of irony, but most people -- even the educated ones -- have great difficulty conceiving of a vast, mobile, sentient colony of trillions of single-celled organisms working together with plan and purpose. Frankly, it's easier to believe in elves. Elves, we can grasp.

That gap between hard science and magical thinking is fertile ground for fantasy.

Singularity fiction bears the same relationship to modern molecular biology that Frankenstein bore to the work of Alessandro Volta.