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I recently saw an interesting show on one of the science channels that featured a segment with Ray Kurzweil, noted futurist and inventor. He is convinced that, within 20 years, scientists will figure out how to stop and reverse the aging process, so he's on a rigorous program of exercise and dietary supplements so he'll live to see that day. He figures that subsequent advances in cell regeneration, artifical organs, and such will make true immortality possible (barring some catastrophic, traumatic injury, or at least until the universe ends).
I think he's engaging in wishful thinking with regard to the time frame, but I suppose science will reach that point eventually. If it does happen within, say, the next 50 years, do you think the medical technology would be made available? If so, to whom? Would it be suppressed? I generally don't believe in conspiracy theories, because there are just too many ways for information to leak out, so I don't think the information could be suppressed for too long. (I don't believe, as some people do, that the major drug companies have cancer cures but suppress them because they can make more money treating cancer.)
But "immortality technology" would require massive, unprecedented changes in society. In the US, we're still geared to a time when people didn't live much past 65. Many workers start being considered "old and irrelevant" in their 40s and 50s. Our pop culture is geared toward youth. Our society doesn't have much use for people after they retire, even if they have another 15 or 20 years of healthy life ahead of them. If people were able to live indefinitely, we'd have to do away with the concept of retirement, and with our placing inordinate value of youth.
On the individual level, too many people don't know what do with the lifespan they have. What would they do with hundreds or thousands of years? Would multiple serial careers become the norm? Could marriages last for millennia? Are we even wired for immortality? Would world-weariness overtake most people eventually?
What about overpopulation? With few people dying, there would have to be limits on birth. Who would decide who can have children, and when, and how many?
Would only a select few be deemed "worthy" of immortality? Who would decide? How long would the masses stand for it?
Would religions change? Would those who believe in particular concepts of afterlife deem human-created immortality immoral, and therefore decline the opportunity to be immortal in this world?
This is the sort of thing that one can't predict until it happens. If Kurzweil is right in his time trame, I'd jump at the chance to entend my life indefinitely, as long as I were able to remain healthy. I have no firm belief in an afterlife (I don't rule out the possibility, but I see no hard evidence for it), so I'd have no religious qualms to deal with. Whether I'd eventually get tired of life, I have no idea. How about you?
There are way too many questions in there to answer.
I just remember watching a Brother's Grimm tale about a man who couldn't die (on PBS).
He eventually wanted to die.
I was really young but it really stuck with me.
I always think its cool on TV or games or movies, or in vampire books when this young man or woman comes out and says I'm 300 years old.
We would have to totally change our ways of life. Imagine working the same job for 300 years. Uh, no thanks. We'd have different stages. The kicker is even with extended lives or immortality the majority of people would still be dumb.
But I could l do everything I've ever wanted. In our lives we have to choose what we go for. I could go back to school and become a professor, then I could take wedding photos for 30 years, then I could work in an ad agency for 20 years, then I'd settle down and have kids with my 230 year old (hot wife).
I'm fine with the natural process of living and dying but I think the OP brings up some interesting points because science may very well discover a way to greatly extend the timespan of a human lifetime at some point in the future. I don't see that as science fiction at all, I think it's probably likely to happen.
This brings up all sorts of questions though because it would completely change society if it actually happened. I see alot more negatives than positives though. For example if people lived to say 500 years on average they'd probably be expected to work for at least 450 years before they could retire. I just worked for 30 years and I'd rather stand in front of a firing squad than work for 30 more. As the OP mentions we'd have serious population issues and would be unable to keep having more children at the same rate we're having them now. The earth just doesn't have the resources to support that many people and even now with people living longer than they ever have before and a worldwide population that keeps escalating I don't see how it would even be possible to sustain the human race if we lived for extremely long periods of time.
I'm fine with the natural process of living and dying but I think the OP brings up some interesting points because science may very well discover a way to greatly extend the timespan of a human lifetime at some point in the future. I don't see that as science fiction at all, I think it's probably likely to happen.
This brings up all sorts of questions though because it would completely change society if it actually happened. I see alot more negatives than positives though. For example if people lived to say 500 years on average they'd probably be expected to work for at least 450 years before they could retire. I just worked for 30 years and I'd rather stand in front of a firing squad than work for 30 more. As the OP mentions we'd have serious population issues and would be unable to keep having more children at the same rate we're having them now. The earth just doesn't have the resources to support that many people and even now with people living longer than they ever have before and a worldwide population that keeps escalating I don't see how it would even be possible to sustain the human race if we lived for extremely long periods of time.
There's an easy solution to that -- make it expensive and only allow people that can afford it to get it. As a salve to the masses, have a lottery every once in a while where a few unprivileged people can win the treatment.
Of course I'd do it. I may not want to live forever, but 2 or 300 years would be cool.
I think the biggest change would be the birthing requirements. We could no longer have as many kids as we want, overpopulation would be a problem.
However, this could open up the space program big time. Think of the trips we could make if you didn't have to worry about throwing years of your life away on a ship going to a far off planet?
I hope they can reverse aging in 50 years, I'd be 80 by then. I know some scientists have predicted that my generation could realistically live to see 150 years old, with modern medicine, organ replacement, and cell regeneration through stem cells, I can see 150 years of age.
Not merely stop the aging process, but actually reverse it? Impressive! And this gentleman of science thinks it's going to happen within the next 20 years? (We still can't cure the common cold, so watch out what you ask for! A couple hundred additional years of life...and who knows how many more colds!)
Not merely stop the aging process, but actually reverse it? Impressive! And this gentleman of science thinks it's going to happen within the next 20 years? (We still can't cure the common cold, so watch out what you ask for! A couple hundred additional years of life...and who knows how many more colds!)
We can't kill a virus, only our bodies have figured that trick out.
However, we have reanimated flesh after death.
Death is the slow process where the body quits producing a certain number of new cells. Once you reach a certain level, your organs shut down because they didn't have enough cells to do their job.
However, if we can find a way to "jump start" the cellular growth process, then I see no reason why we can't live forever.
Reversing the aging process may be a little out there, but reaching a stasis might be obtainable.
Kurzweil is in an interesting man. In the 1970s, he led the development of optical character recognition (OCR) software, and then the text-to-speech synthesizer, which enabled blind people to have books read to them by computer. I first heard of him when he developed the Kurzweil 250 in the 1980s, the first musical keyboard that played digital samples of instruments. It was the industry standard for many years. Years later, I read his first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, in which he speculated on the possible course of AI advancement over the next few centuries. I just Googled, and he's written a couple books on why he believes immortality can be achieved, including the medical hurdles that have to be overcome first. I'll have to check them out. It looks like he's saying that in the next 20 to 50 years, the aging process can be halted, and degenerative diseases can be eradicated, so presumably you'd reach steady state until reversing the aging process becomes possible.
Again, I'm not saying I believe it will happen that soon, but who knows? In the interest of limiting my original post to a mere dozen or two questions, though (and I didn't expect people to address each one -- I just wanted to start a general discussion), I didn't mention that I think that advances in other areas of technology will complicate the scenario in ways that we can't even guess. For example, Kurzweil (and others) believe that computers will exceed the processing power of the human brain in 20 or 30 years. If we're eventually able to completely understand the human brain, might it be possible to replicate the structure of brain via software -- and transfer the complete contents of one's mind to a computer, thereby eliminating the need for a biological body? I'm not weighing in on whether this would be a good, bad, or neutral thing, just whether it will become possible. That could be one eventual possible trade-off for immortality: if you want to live forever, you'd have to do so virtually and let your biological body be killed, which would solve the birth-rate problem, and much of the resource-consumption problems. The possibilities of that are mind-blowing, no pun intended.
Yeah, I remember the Night Of The Living Dead and other classics. I find it interesting that we have revived microbes like bacteria after very long periods of time so maybe you're on to something. I just don't think we've arrived at the point when we can rejuvenate the corpse of an 80 year old woman who died in 1860 into a twentyfirst century school girl.
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