Do you want to live forever? Does the concept of human immortality seem absurd? Perhaps you should rethink the absurdities of possibly living forever. many scientists believe we are coming close to reaching the, “Singularity”. when this happens a rapid expansion of technologies will occur. Things that seem impossible today such as immortality might very well become not only possible but likely if the singularity happens.
♦ What is the Singularity?
The singularity is just a concept. It is time when with our rapidly developing processor speeds we create a computer that has a true artificial intelligence. Once this occurs a truly intelligent computer can teach and grow itself at an exponential rate quickly surpass the computational processing power of all the brains in the entire world. With all this computational and true intelligence power working on science there could potentially be a rapid expansion of science unlike anything that could be imagined.
♦ How does this effect immortality and the human lifespan?
Scientists have many ideas what it would take to achieve immortality. The problem is that science is close to the reality. IT is like Leonardo da Vinci imagining a helicopter. The basic principles are understood but that does not mean that in any way, shape or form scientists are ready to actually create the necessary steps today. With exponential growth in science and understanding that singularity may bring about, amazing things can happen.
♦ What would it take to be immortal?
Many diseases are the direct causes of people’s deaths. The indirect cause and the ultimate inhibiting factor in immortality is cellular death. A rapid increase in science caused by the singularity could possibly create immortality into main ways. The first way is to figure out a way to keep cellular death from happening. Both nano-science of biological science have potential to do this at some point in the future. It is likely a far away undercurrent level of scientific advance, but with the singularity the science could reach such a point quite rapidly. The other main method is some sort of a cyborg. This idea has human consciousness being uploaded into a computer or biological/computer interface. Thereby eliminating diseases and death from the human equation.
Does all this sound like science fiction? For now it is. Scientists see these things and many others as possible advances. Some of them within the next 50 years, some of them in the next 500 years. It is hard to predict when a singularity could happen. Perhaps it never can. It may be like ancient alchemists searching for a way to turn lead into gold. Perhaps true sentiments and intelligence is something that is only given by a higher power. Or perhaps the singularity could happen within the next week; or more likely within the next 10 to 50 years.
Fifty years ago there were supercomputers that took up the area of the city block. Those supercomputers had less computational power than your standard iPod does today. The possible computational power of a computer 50 years from today using the same geometric progression is quite mind-boggling. Is the singularity and immortality around the corner? Only time and science will tell
