The Singularity: When will it come, and how will the world end before then?

I know it's been three months since we've blogged, but this article(Surviving Immortality: Just getting to the Singularity is the hard part.) inspired me to post. I've been reading lately about the collapse of civilization, but still hold in my head the inevitability of the Singularity. How do these two ideas complement or contradict each other? It's really hard to say. On the one hand, Ray Kurweil essentially says we will leave the natural world altogether as machines(read technology) surpass our human intellect and we merge with this new form of life. But if civilization collapses instead, we will be left with only our knowledge of the earth and what we can share with it(food, grown with our own hands; shelter, created with locally available materials and only our own knowledge of building; clothing, but only that we can make from readily available materials). How can we simultaneously prepare for both scenarios? Or should we more seriously guess that the future holds a road that leads down the middle of both the extreme conclusions of the Singularity and the Collapse of Civilization? At least right now, I am content to dabble in both the world and the technology that takes us from the world.