A big question about the singularity is what will life be like afterwards. Ignore for the moment three different main schools of what exactly the singularity means, and take the position that humans will have direct control over their detailed body functions in any scenario. Why wouldn't people just hook up to their pleasure centers and spend all their time in absolute ecstasy? A famous experiment in the 1950s showed that rats would do exactly that, when given the opportunity.
Rat Rapture
It's quite possible that some humans will do just that as well, given the opportunity. This presumes that what passes for humanity at that point even has the same single point of experience such that the point of view of a single 'entity' even makes sense. On the other hand, even today it is possible to do something similar through drugs, and yet relatively few people take drugs to induce a constant state of euphoria. It is possible that the social structures that govern behavior today will still be not only active, but also enhanced, through tightly coupling peoples' identities together.
Another possibility is that when people are able to create a virtual reality that they prefer over the physical one, they will abandon their ties to the physical plane altogether. This may not be the direct equivalent to tapping into a pleasure center, but may be only a few steps removed from that. It really comes down to the purpose of existence, whether for the individual or for the collective mind. If there is a higher purpose, beyond pleasure, then virtual reality is a tool that can be an 'escapist' dead end, or alternatively used to learn, explore and drive towards a higher purpose.
I'd like to believe there is a higher purpose, although as illustrated in Peter Gabriel's song 'Shock the Monkey': "Don't like it but I guess I'm learning" as told by the monkey, perhaps we are only fooling ourselves! Poor monkey.
Future Shock
