Is immortality within our reach?

What if they told you that you could live forever? could his death be postponed indefinitely? Like most of us, your initial reaction is probably a laugh, followed by “Sure, sure…wouldn’t that be nice?” After all, mortality is a fact of life and our ultimate death is something we must (pardon the pun) learn to live with…or must we?

Author, inventor, and futurist Ray Kurzweil doesn’t think so. In fact, he sees death as nothing more than another hurdle that he hopes will be overcome by science, albeit the biggest hurdle yet. Although the very idea of ​​”living forever” immediately provokes a feeling of skepticism in all of us, Kurzweil presents more than just a convincing argument for the possibility of immortality.

Called “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine, Ray Kurzweil is fast becoming the most quoted futurist of our time. He is a recipient of the National Medal of Technology and is a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame; His inventions (such as the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind in 1976) have inspired comparisons with Thomas Edison, and his admirers range from Bill Gates to Bill Clinton.

Kurzweil is not given to making unsound predictions that lack factual basis; Furthermore, his visions of the future are based on ongoing scientific discoveries, paradigm shifts, and technological advances. His written works begin by examining past trends in science and technology, and lead to explanations of the rapid growth and advancement of specific areas. This can be seen in his “Law of Accelerating Returns,” which explains the exponential growth of computer intelligence based on a wide variety of factors, all of which he backs up with statistical data.

Kurzweil’s latest book, “The Singularity Is Near,” currently tops the list of popular science reads and has been a long-awaited follow-up to his 1999 bestseller “The Age of Spiritual Machines.” After writing his first major book about the future (“The Age of Intelligent Machines”) nearly three decades ago, which made detailed predictions about the 1990s, his readership grew rapidly. This was largely due to the fact that the decade unfolded exactly as he had described it, and with machine precision. Kurzweil recently gave a lecture at MIT, summarizing “The Singularity Is Near” for a student audience. This conference is currently taking place in online media and can be found on a variety of internet sites.

Kurzweil teamed up with Dr. Terry Grossman in 2004 and the two wrote a book titled “Fantastic Voyage: Live Enough To Live Forever.” In “Fantastic Voyage,” the authors describe the science behind radical life extension. They spell out in precise detail the steps we can start taking now to “slow the aging process down to a crawl” so that in the next two decades we can stop and reverse this process altogether. In order to bridge the gap between life now and the distant future, the authors identify three specific steps, or bridges, that we will cross along the way.

Bridge One is made up of the many methods currently available to us, such as what supplements to take, what foods to eat, and how to effectively “reprogram our biochemistry” to change our genetic programming. The authors describe a specific longevity program consisting of current therapies, diets, and supplements that will, in effect, allow us to stay healthy long enough to enjoy new advances in the area of ​​genetics and biotechnology, the seeds of which we have. they are watching now.

These advances will allow us to stop diseases and reverse aging effectively. The biotechnological revolution brings with it advanced knowledge of genetic codes and methods to influence, block and modify gene expression. The authors describe types of gene therapy that we will see in the near future. Therapeutic cloning as a means of defeating programmed cell death and the engineering of human cells are covered in detail in the description of Bridge One. No doubt the advances made within the first bridge will allow many of us to reach Bridge Two.

Bridge Two explains the key factor (and possibly the most controversial): nanotechnology. Self-replicating nanobots (robots the size of blood cells) will be placed in our bloodstream, allowing small operations to take place at the cellular level. These robots are built molecule by molecule and will be able to perform a wide variety of tasks within the human body. Within two decades, nanotechnology will be ubiquitous, allowing the human race to postpone death indefinitely. Patents already exist for many specialized types of nanobots, and many “nanoprojects” are currently underway. Kurzweil and Grossman look forward to seeing Bridge Two and plan to experience the technological advances that follow.

The authors have presented a wonderful vision of the future in “Fantastic Voyage,” and their method of staying healthy long enough to reach bridges two and three is sure to inspire hope in all who read it, especially baby boomers. Kurzweil and Grossman explain that while most baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1963) will not live to see Bridge Three, many will reach this important tipping point and then go beyond it, moving on and beyond, at which point can put death. off indefinitely.

The authors flatly inform us that the baby boomer generation (to which they both belong) will be the final generation in which the majority die before reaching Bridge Three. However, according to the authors, boomers who follow the regimen described in “Fantastic Voyage” (including themselves) have an optimistic chance of surviving across the three bridges and overcoming death…the biggest hurdle of all.