These people believe in the TechnologicalSingularity theory: The possibility that technologically augmented intelligence will change human life as we know it or possibly wipe it out completely.
Since the capabilities of such intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technologicalsingularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which events cannot be predicted or understood.
Much as I love the march of technology and innovation, I remain skeptical of the techno-optimists who are convinced that just around the corner is the technological solution to all of our problems, ushering in the singularity or, at the very least, the United Federation of Planets.