Impending Immortality?
This CNN story describes a genius inventor who is taking somewhat extreme measures to preserve his longevity in order to wait for when immortality is a reality:
CNN- Inventor preserves self to witness immortality
The article touches on the feasibility of immortality but less so on the social ramifications which would be significant.
Posted by Alan care/of Gene
CNN- Inventor preserves self to witness immortality
The article touches on the feasibility of immortality but less so on the social ramifications which would be significant.
Posted by Alan care/of Gene
posted by Alan at 12:25 PM | Permalink |
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3 Comments:
I think he is being optimistic. My guess is 50 years to life extension via the solving of the telomerase problem. As far as self-repairing nanobots, could be much longer, if not limited by some fundamental universal laws. But within 20 years we may have stop gap measures to slow down aging.
The bigger questions were addressed in the last paragraph: Who would get this technology first? Wealthier people? If the technology came down fast enough, would that not cause major civil unrest? The poor, as a class (and I'm talking world-wide, not so much in the U.S.) may not violently revolt to own a big screen TV or BMW, but for immortality?
If we get by that struggle, then how do we handle reproduction? We certianly could not allow it in any kind of way we are familiar with now without causing massive overpopulation?
And yet, what a tragedy to limit the number of new beings. And how is it fair that all of the Da Vinchis, Newtons, Ghandis and other generally good people had to die, so some wife-beating, low-life living today can live forever?
Major social upheaval is an understatement. We all better get smarter and wiser first. Better hope life extension technology rolls out slowly over the course of a century, so that we can adapt or social institutions and way of life.
I agree he is being optimistic especially if he is relying on nanobots. There is also a kind of sad paranoia that surrounds such resolutions. Roy Walford, of Biosphere fame, subjected himself to years of caloric restriction, only to die of some illness.
I think I prefer to enjoy life, work out and maybe have some red wine.
rk
Thanks for the comment ReddKnight. Its been a while since I heard that moniker. :)
I definitely agree that when it comes to prolonging longevity based on calorie restriction that I'd rather give up 10-20 years in favor of actually "living". If I recall, the subjects (such as Roy Walford) were unable to participate in physical activities and even suffered from loss of libido (yikes).
However, to be fair, the subject of this article was doing so in an effort to live long enough to benefit from real life-extension technology. So, in that scenario, do you give up "living" for the next 30-40 years in order to be rewarded with a 100-200 extra years of life (presumably robust)?
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