I find this extremely fascinating:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Inventor Ray Kurzweil takes 250 nutritional supplements a day in his quest to live long enough to reap the benefits he expects from biotechnology. He says he’s trying to reprogram his body, as he would his computer.
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Kurzweil, a well-regarded scientist who invented the flatbed scanner and a reading machine for the blind, claimed his pills appear to be helping: Biological tests conducted at a clinic in Denver found his body resembles that of a man in his early forties, he claimed, rather than his true age of 56.
At MIT last week, Kurzweil described a future in which he’s convinced immortality — or a drastically longer life span — will be possible thanks to emerging technologies. His new book, which will hit stores in a few weeks, outlines a special “longevity program” of diet, exercise and nutritional supplements aimed at slowing the aging process.
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He described three stages or “bridges” on the purported road to immortality. First is his healthy living program designed to correct “metabolic imbalances” and keep people alive long enough to benefit from the second stage. In stage two, a decade or so away, he contends biotechnology advances will block diseases and slow aging, because the decoding of our genome is already leading to tissue-engineering techniques for regrowing cells and organs, and to the creation of genetically targeted drugs and gene therapies.
These techniques, he said, should help some people reach the third stage — about 30 years away — when nanotechnology will allow humans to radically rebuild and extend their bodies with help from “nanobots,” itsy-bitsy robots smaller than human blood cells that will slip into our bloodstreams to fix DNA errors, fight pathogens and expand intelligence.At that point, he declared, humans may be able to live forever.
Dr. Kurzweil sure is going through a lot of work to live forever. I mean, I wanna live forever and see the future too, but you don’t see me stuffing myself full of 250 pills a day. I just sent these guys ten bucks and then sat back, content to enjoy my first life here and now and then eventually enjoy my second life eons in the future.
Hmm… Maybe I should put Dr. Kurzweil in touch with Alex Chiu, the maker of the Eternal Life Rings. Then he can more easily live forever and look fashionable.
JAB
If time travel were possible, how come noone from the future has come back?
It could be that no one has come back because of extremely restrictive governmental regulations. It makes sense that any sensitive technology like time travel would be immediately seized by the government and classified top secret, all in the name of National Security.
Another possibility is that time travel is relatively secret in the future, perhaps owned and developed by a corporation. Whatever entity might be in charge of the technology may only go back in small groups and doing their very best to operate in secret and avoiding paradoxical shenanigans.
Or, most likely, time travel doesn’t and never will exist. That seems most probable, though certainly less fun. One can hope, though.
JAB
Josh I think you’re telling her a little too much. The company’s not going to want to hear you blabbering on and on about time travel and its possibilies, to some twentieth cen-ah er, I mean some stranger on the internet. If you know what I mean.