I don’t want to attain immortality by becoming famous. I want to become immortal by living forever”—Woody Allen’s wistful confession encapsulates the mystical world view of the alchemists, who sought the philosopher’s stone. That search for a magical object that conferred immortality (and turned dross to gold) led to the scientific discipline of chemistry.
As scientific principles were discovered, mankind gradually gave up on the hopes of magically attaining immortality. But it did find rational ways to improve health indicators and lengthen life expectancy.
Now, it appears that there could be several scientific routes to the alchemical miracle. By the mid-21st century, perhaps within the next 20 years, there could be dramatic increases in life expectancy or even functional immortality. “Singularitarian” Raymond Kurzweil is one of those who think immortality is around the corner. The 60-year-old computer science pioneer has mapped out a medical regime that should ensure he lives long enough to be a beneficiary.
Kurzweil is famous for the optical character recognition (OCR) algorithms that made him wealthy. The MIT graduate’s most famous invention is a reading machine for the blind that can decipher any typeface. Kurzweil is a recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT prize, and sometimes referred to as a “modern Edison” for his string of inventions.
His latest book, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, expounds his theories. In this context, singularity refers to a hypothetical point in time when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence. Coupled to nano-technology, intelligent, cell-sized nano-bots will become ubiquitous post-singularity. These nano-bots will permeate the human body and monitor its functions. They will indefinitely maintain and repair bodies and thus insulate mankind from the ravages of time and disease.
Eventually, it will be possible to record everyone’s DNA and make real-time downloads of individual experiences and memories. Once such digital backups exist, even accidental deaths will be reversible. New bodies will be cloned for accident victims and reprogrammed with stored digital memories.
This route to immortality needs several massive breakthroughs to make it technically feasible. But a lot of smart, informed, rational people believe that singularity is a matter of “when”, not “if”.
Apart from the cyborg-style options, there may be other routes to longer life, if not immortality. Many mainstream scientists believe that normal life expectancy could be extended to around 100-110 years, simply through the advances made in bio-sciences and our understanding of ageing, disease, etc.
It may, for example, be possible to slow ageing or reverse it. This year’s Nobel for Medicine went to a trio who investigated telomerase, an enzyme that protects the cells of foetuses and children from damage and allows those cells to replicate.
Telomerase is one of several keys to ageing—it switches off in normal adult cells. If it switches on again, cancer occurs. Cancer cells are effectively immortal, because they can replicate forever. Understanding exactly how telomerase functions could not only help find a cure for cancer, it could also help reverse ageing.
Like any other major technological advance, the advent of immortality, or even of greatly increased lifespans, presents entirely new challenges along with the obvious benefits. An intimation of immortality would destroy the basis for most religions, removing afterlife and rebirth from conceptual frameworks. It would also force legal systems to review and modify age-old concepts like inheritance and marriage.
It would have a dark side for sure. On a large scale, it could cause the resurrection of Malthusian nightmares as death rates plummeted and populations grew unchecked. It could trigger economic chaos—imagine a permanently expanding workforce, which never retired. Still that population would include social scientists, who could while away the centuries modelling a brave new reality.
