Singularity Summit 2012 - be there!

As regular readers know I have been to two previous Singularity Summits (2008 and 2010), and will be at the 2012 event. The speakers look particularly interesting to me this year. I may finally be stupid enough to blurt out to Vernor Vinge how awesome the adolescent me thought Fire Upon the Deep was (I downed a beer with Vinge in 2008, but didn't say a word to him). Carl will be there again, and we'll definitely catch up in the "meat-space." More importantly I have a lot of socializing to do, since I haven't seen any of my friends from the Berkeley LW community since I left the Bay Area in the summer of 2011. But I hope to meet new & interesting people, as I always have at these events (the social circle overlaps a great deal with BIL). So if you read this weblog and are going to the Singularity Summit and think I'm worth talking to in person just come on up, I'm not very shy. With the prior that you're actually at the Summit my assumption is that you're interesting, unless proven otherwise! Addendum: Some people are curious if I am a "believer" in the Singularity. I'll be honest and say I don't think that the idea is necessarily crazy, but I spend my days thinking about genetics far too much to really be a hardcore A.I.-obsessive, which is what is needed to entertain the concept with any seriousness. Rather, my interest is rather in the social milieu where I can temporarily dispense with niceties and get down to the type of verbal blood-sport which I truly relish: engagement with intent not to thrash your opponent, but to wrestle with reality and perhaps squeeze out a few points against it.