Nanotechnology, in combination with artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology, is about to launch the third wave of human longevity, offering a way to live indefinitely – an escape from the constraints of natural human life.
As rare as such ages have been until Jeanne Calment reached the ‘impossible’ age of 122, it might seem that a rise in life expectancy could be the final ceiling of human longevity. Soon, the once-once-and-rare-it-will-be-again might no longer be possible.’ Thanks to the move from merely pharmaceutical products to nano-robots that integrate into the body, then, we have the means to finally make this impossible dream possible.
Why we age and how to escape the ageing process is a quandary that has faced scientists since they first began studying human longevity. Since we experience slow decline in the way we function, it must be a new approach to repairing damage at the cell level A supercentenarian is a very old person who has reached the age of 110 or older. These individuals present the ultimate challenge for a new approach to slowing ageing because they show that ageing can go on much longer than anyone ever thought possible.
Nanotechnology would appear to be the final solution to the ageing problem, as applied through nanobots that could be used to repair or replace biological components on a molecular scale. He calls this achievement longevity escape velocity – and now that someone who could live to 1,000 has actually been born, it is plausible that the first such person is already with us, powered by exponential growth in nanomedicine and AI.
But even given the tremendous promise of life extension, there are ambivalent attitudes toward lifespans that are dramatically lengthened. A tension between the desire to live longer and healthier, and the possible immortality that might be entailed, masks a deeper escape from death in culture more broadly, with significant implications for the question of quality of life, the nature of being, and the ethics of the afterlife.
From maintaining cellular health all the way to upgrading human capacities, nanobots could one day save our lives, reverse ageing, and make us superhuman.
It is in this important context that we find ourselves today, standing at the threshold of this new world. Coupled together, a digitally enhanced brain and a body liberated from ageing constraints could redefine what it means to be human. The escape into the future of the post-biological is not just long life but the evolution of human potential itself.
Escape points to immortality and life extension in the sense that it’s set to transcend biological limits through technologies that will, at a minimum, allow humans to ‘escape’ traditional lifespans and the ills of ageing – and perhaps to exist (and perhaps thrive) in ways that bear almost no resemblance to our current biological way of life.
And escape, in this new paradigm, would not be only about avoiding death. It would be about an evolutionary shift, an opening Ethan Siegel writes in ‘What You’ll Need for an Escape Velocity into the Future’. This is a new chapter in the evolution of life on Earth, a reconversion of Homo sapiens. Get it right, and we will all take an escape price for our species into a world that we can only now imagine.
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