Immortality only 20 years away says scientist

[lifterdead]

Kurzweil is brilliant.

I've read a few of his books and I think his basic tenet is sound; when technological development reaches a certain point, advances will evolve much more rapidly than we expect, probably far beyond anything in our experience.

My problem with his predictions, of course, is that the singularity is always near. He sets some pretty quantifiable goals for the future and some of his predictions have been spot on, but unscientific events, like the recession, can have a tremendous affect research.

 

[kn609]

why would anyone want to live in this world forever?

I don't think it's much that anyone would want to live forever, but more of achieving that accomplishment of creating the most technological experiment known to mankind which is thought to be impossible.

 

[Zigurd]

if anyone believes that humans will achieve immortality on this earth in the state/condition we are in now.. wow, just wow..

Why ? There are always some pricks with enough money to pay for research to make their lives longer to win even more money broseidon.

And there are always noble people who want their work to help others.

 

[SerbMarko]

so some of you believe we can live forever?

 

[Zigurd]

so some of you believe we can live forever?

Yes. The human body is a biological machine. Dwell deep enough into how machines work and how to affect their mechanisms and you get yourself improved machines. I do believe with gene manipulation we could live forever. Or at least long enough for us to want to die already.

 

[kn609]

so some of you believe we can live forever?

Who knows man?
We were having a discussion about how technology will be in the future in my sports and entertainment marketing class and my teacher brought up a good point:
Think back years and years ago before cell phones were ever created. Did you believe in like 30 years you could be walking around with a phone, internet, music, camera, and games all in one object in your pocket?
Though in this case, this seems a little more unfathomable.

 

[MrChewiebitums]

why would anyone want to spend an extra second more than they have too on his floating turd we call Earth

 

[kn609]

why would anyone want to spend an extra second more than they have too on his floating turd we call Earth

You really only see things through your own perspective and only yours huh?

 

[kn609]

double post my bad

 

[Big04pimpin]

Some of you guys need to change your life. The outlook of your life and what you are doing is pretty depressing.

 

[Anabolicus]

why would anyone want to spend an extra second more than they have too on his floating turd we call Earth

Why don't you just kill yourself right now then if you hate living here so much?

 

[tim290280]

so some of you believe we can live forever?

Couple of points:
You wouldn't live forever, but it depends on how you measure forever. Technically being able to survive several hundred years would be "forever", but in a literal sense not forever. This is completely plausible.

What these guys are likely to be talking about is linear progression technology and an extrapolation upon that idea. This is fraught with holes. So far modern computer technology has followed this linear trend but any normal system follows a classic growth curve, which stagnates and decays at a point in time. Their supposition is therefore flawed thinking or at the very least fancifull.

Cracking nanotech is not the only thing that needs to be done. There is work being done on the primary (believed) driver of cell death and aging. Telomere shortening is being studied and they could find a way of continuing the production of an (enzyme or protein, one of the two can't remember) that will halt shortening thus essentially allow continued cell replication. This is not dissimilar to cancer cells though, so there could be issues. This could lead to long life without aging.

All of this will not stop death. All of this will not stop aging (many processes). All of this is probably someone being misquoted or misunderstood by a layman.

 

[BigBen]

ding ding ding, Tim wins the 1st place trophy

 

[Line]

ding ding ding, Tim wins the 1st place trophy

I'd give that to Anabolicus. Tim can have 2nd.

 

[Ryeland]

Couple of points:
You wouldn't live forever, but it depends on how you measure forever. Technically being able to survive several hundred years would be "forever", but in a literal sense not forever. This is completely plausible.

What these guys are likely to be talking about is linear progression technology and an extrapolation upon that idea. This is fraught with holes. So far modern computer technology has followed this linear trend but any normal system follows a classic growth curve, which stagnates and decays at a point in time. Their supposition is therefore flawed thinking or at the very least fancifull.

I agree whole heartedly, progress in technology is always a non liner progression. I do disagree about computers, in the last few years Moore's law has been proven wrong. The 4ghz mark has been a challenge for the industry to crack reliably. In fact this is the reason we are seeing much more focus on parallel process algorithms and research. But i digress.

To assume that we will be able to linearly improve technology is erroneous.

However I pose this thought. At the end of the 19th century it was believed that all major scientific discoveries had been made and that only refinements would be made to theories during the 20th century. However as you know, this was not the case. So in 100 years it will be very interesting to see where technology is.

 

[BigBen]

I'd give that to Anabolicus. Tim can have 2nd.

 

[Pickle]

@ line

 

[tim290280]

I agree whole heartedly, progress in technology is always a non liner progression. I do disagree about computers, in the last few years Moore's law has been proven wrong. The 4ghz mark has been a challenge for the industry to crack reliably. In fact this is the reason we are seeing much more focus on parallel process algorithms and research. But i digress.

To assume that we will be able to linearly improve technology is erroneous.

However I pose this thought. At the end of the 19th century it was believed that all major scientific discoveries had been made and that only refinements would be made to theories during the 20th century. However as you know, this was not the case. So in 100 years it will be very interesting to see where technology is.

I saw a recent discussion by a computer technology guy who was discussing "where is our robot?". He was discussing Moore's predictions and how close we were to them. New Scientist also covered the microchip recently and how microprocessors were going. I wasn't aware of the slow down, which shows that the natural growth curve is being followed.

But the thing about natural growth is that it cycles. We will reach the end of one era, things will stagnate and decline as a new system or set of technologies develops to take over. We progress rather than return to base levels due to our ability to maintain a higher natural level that would normally be limited by resources. Technology/humanity doesn't always have the same natural limitations.

 

[Ryeland]

I saw a recent discussion by a computer technology guy who was discussing "where is our robot?". He was discussing Moore's predictions and how close we were to them. New Scientist also covered the microchip recently and how microprocessors were going. I wasn't aware of the slow down, which shows that the natural growth curve is being followed.

But the thing about natural growth is that it cycles. We will reach the end of one era, things will stagnate and decline as a new system or set of technologies develops to take over. We progress rather than return to base levels due to our ability to maintain a higher natural level that would normally be limited by resources. Technology/humanity doesn't always have the same natural limitations.

The slow down has been caused by the "4 GHz Barrier". If you will take a quick browse for computer components you will not see any mass produced processors with a clock frequency of above 4.0 GHz. The reason for this being the excess heat produced by the chip melts the silicon. Some processors have been made that reach up to 500GHz, but they require the use of superconductors and liquid nitrogen cool.

You are quite right about the appearance of a different processing technology taking over. Parallel processing is the current wave of the future, supposedly with quantum computing to follow. Moore's law was incredibly accurate up until about the last 3 or 4 years as the industry moved in a different direction.

It think we are about see a very interesting era of distributed computing technologies, especially given the capacity of wireless communication and general purpose processors.

 

[Anabolicus]

I'd give that to Anabolicus. Tim can have 2nd.