Could we be just eight years away from achieving immortality?
Nanobots will do it, predicts futurist Ray Kurzweil
(Photo credit: Processed Photography on Unsplash)
Among the many predictions of longevity extending to 120, 150 or beyond, only a tiny handful have dared to imagine the possibility of immortality. Is this just the stuff of sci-fi — or could it actually be possible?
In evaluating these kinds of forecasts, the first requirement is to consider the source. And in this case, we have a very serious and credible source to deal with.
Ray Kurzweil is an American computer scientist, inventor, author and futurist. He’s written books on health, artificial intelligence and transhumanism (which, among its other ideas, envisions a fusion of biology and technology to embed AI-powered devices in the human body). Kurzweil is an expert on the possibilities of nanotechnology, robotics and biotechnology as agents of life extension. In 1999 he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Bill Clinton; inducted into the US Patent Office’s National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002, and received over 21 honorary doctorates.
He also has a great track record of predicting the future. For example in 1990, when it was thought to be an impossibility, he predicted a computer beat a grandmaster at chess within 10 years. It happened when Big Blue defeated Gary Kasparov in 1997.
Okay, long preamble to set up his credentials — but it’s necessary because his prediction is so stunning. There has been a flood of reporting on this; one example is here.
By 2030, Kurzweil predicts, the combination of developments in genetics, nanotechnology and robotics will lead to the creation and deployment of “nanobots,” microscopic robots that can enter the body to repair damaged cells and tissues and, in effect, reverse the effects of aging. They could also work on our cells immune to diseases like cancer.
That would account for longevity — even radical, almost unthinkable longevity — but immortality? Here is where it gets more complex. There is a fusion of computer and brain — or a mini-computer implanted in the brain — that enables knowledge, memory, ideas and all the other markers of individual identity, to be digitized and thus capable of living forever, and being added to, in digital space.
You can learn more about Kurzweil’s ideas here, here and here.
The fact that these predictions are being offered by such a brilliant thinker with such substantial credentials is staggering in itself. The implications are even more staggering. What do you think?
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Personalized gene therapy/technology seems more likely than nanobots, but the result would be the same.
Interesting article! Sadly, I rarely can find information to support seniors with modest financial availability to remain safely in their chosen home. This is why I researched and published a resource book with nearly two hundred ideas and tips most at no or minimal cost.