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Tag: Immortality
These items have all been tagged with the tag "Immortality", You can see other tags in the Tag CloudIn Britain in 1901, life expectancy at birth was 49 for women and 45 for men. By 2002, this had risen to 81 and 76 respectively. This rapid increase in longevity has created hopes among gerontologists not just of an extended "quality of lifespan" well into the nineties, but of lifting the 120-year limit.
Increasing capabilities and lowering costs of computation are driving modern biotechnology - since biology at the level of proteins and genes is essentially the business of processing information. One could argue that rapidly increasing abilities in computation lie at the root of advances in all fields of human endeavor across the past fifty years or so. Every human action of any significance or complexity involves information processing, or can be made more effective through processes that involve information processing - such as effective invention and design of better tools and methods, planning, prediction, and so forth.
Russian transhumanist Danila Medvedev posted a nice, simple diagram of the way many supporters of the development of radical life extension look at the tree of technology and enablement. One could quibble with the details, bearing in mind it's written by one of the folk behind the Russian cryonics group KrioRus, but it I think it captures the spirit of the long-term transhumanist viewpoint:
From The Economist print edition
The latest from the wacky world of anti-senescence therapy
DEATH is a fact of life - at least it has been so far. Humans grow old. From early adulthood, performance starts to wane. Muscles become progressively weaker, cognition fails. But the point at which age turns to ill health and, ultimately, death is shifting - that is, people are remaining healthier for longer. And that raises the question of how death might be postponed, and whether it might be postponed indefinitely.
Rejuvenation is the procedure of reversing the aging process, thus regaining youth. As people get older, their health worsens, strength and intelligence diminishes, beauty goes away. Historically, people in all societies have looked for a way to regain the qualities of youth.
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti commentator Vladimir Simonov) - When life is good, it is especially bitter to admit that it will end some day. And this simple truth encourages nouveaux riches Russians, called oligarchs here, to spend through the nose on all kinds of rejuvenation procedures and on scientific research to create the "elixir of youth." The people who have everything you can dream about, from castles in Scotland to garages with a dozen Ferraris, want absolute, 100% joie de vivre in their own immortality.
One of such people is Vladimir Bryntsalov, the pharmaceutical king of Russia who plans to spend $2 million on setting up a personal rejuvenation laboratory. He has had a course of stem cell injections and feels no older than 20, though his biological age is about 60.
Some scientists predict that today's children will be able to live for more than 1,000 years. Is immortality just around the corner? Bryan Appleyard peers into a hair-raising future without death
Somewhere in the world today lives a child who will change everything. Imagine this child is called Sally. Today is her 11th birthday. She lives in Esher in Surrey. Her parents are happy and wealthy. All her grandparents are old, alive and well.
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