" Wait a minute, Su Ang responds. Here we are, traveling in a spaceship the size of a soda can. We’ve left our bodies behind to conserve space and energy so that the laser-sail-powered Field Circus can cruise faster. Our brains have been uploaded and are now running electronically within the tiny spaceship’s nanocomputers. The pub is “here,” along with other virtual environments, so that we don’t go into shock from sensory deprivation. “And you can tell me that the idea of a fundamental change in the human condition is nonsense?”
Accelerando is the story of three generations of a dysfunctional family living through the Singularity." -- fPopular Science | Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind?
see also Bruce Sterling in Wired on the Singularity and keep an eye on the comments to a little blurb on same in MIT Technology Review.