Kurzweil's thesis is really not applicable in the non-technological domain afaik. I agree with you on this, not least of which because you are TEG.
Not familiar with Kurzweil, but I'll look him up. What is his thesis that you say is not applicable to a non-technological domain?
The reason I mentioned death and an AI singularity is because overcoming or even understanding them requires an incredible amount of knowledge and know how about multiple phenomenon, from sub-atomic reality to complex brain functions and so on, in a lot of which we are still in a very "infantile" level of development. It isn't like working on increasing the processing capacity of a computer chip, where your field of application is fairly narrowed and you're "simply" working on improving your current model.
Army of One talks about the iPhone being more advanced than what was imagined 50 years ago, which is true, but not everything progresses exponentially or even linearly. For example, the sound barrier was broken decades ago, but we are VERY far from even approaching the light barrier, let alone be capable of breaking it (if it is even possible - I'm talking manned flights). Our understanding of the physics and underlying science of the issue itself hasn't been resolved or even proved yet. Things like death and AI are probably about the same.