Sorry, I should have phrased it as a positive-outcome post-Singularity environment. Mainstream audiences might not grasp the nuance between post-scarcity and post-Singularity, but when I read the series for the first time, the Mind-level AGI figured prominently in setting The Culture apart from Star Trek. Around that axle, Banks wound into his setting near-unlimited, near-free energy (the Grid), galaxy-spanning capable FTL (1-200,000+ X speed of light), carefully-orchestrated anarchy as a practical and efficient "government", and all the other accoutrements. It is amazing Banks didn't readily yield to the temptation to use the Minds as a deus ex machina, and instead showed how they would also grapple with their own limitations, frustrations, doubts, etc.

Even more important than the sheer existence of the Minds was their egalitarian disposition and relationship to their pan-human co-citizens, and interesting tangentials like the Minds' polite yet firm declination to Sublime. I will sorely miss Banks' weaving of the tales of the proto-Culture, and how the early Minds came about to that position.