The Inevitability of Open-Ended Lifespans

Dear Future Centenarian,

Here’s an excellent commentary from Reason at LongevityMeme.org:

“The choice of living a healthy, youthful life of centuries and more is inevitable. That much is obvious, written in the present breadth of human civilization, knowledge of what is possible under the laws of physics, and pace of progress in biotechnology. The burning question in this case is whether or not it will happen soon enough to benefit you reading this today:

Replacement biological organs are a decade away, and commercial efforts to develop sophisticated repairs to age-damaged cells and vital biomechanisms will be rife in the 2020s. Computational power will be so great and so cheap that tens of thousands and then millions of research programs will be accomplished in simulation for a tiny fraction of their cost today; the priesthood of bioscience will dissolve and progress will be as diverse, energetic and imaginative as it is for open source software at present. Redesigning human biochemistry and greatly augmenting our biology with nanomachinery will be hot areas for venture funding.

I see development of the baseline technologies required for greatly extending the healthy human life span as a given for the next few decades. The biotechnology revolution is roaring ahead, and there's no halting the relentless advance of computational power. But just because we can doesn't mean we will - there is still the need to take that baseline technology and turn it to a desired use.

Given that there is no massive, serious life extension research and development community in existence today - and here, I'm thinking of a community to match the cancer research establishment in breadth and support - the future we'd like to see is still in doubt. If we want the awe-inspiring biotechnologies of the 2020s promptly put to use in repairing the damage of aging, right out of the starting gate, then we'd better get working on that now.”