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IS IMMORTALITY RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER?

Is immortality within our reach?

When one speaks of immortality, nothing but evil villains with a horrible master plan come to mind but, what if it were possilble for the people of today to begin living forever?

Many questions come to mind. Are we ready? Can we handle it? How would we react? What would people do if they knew they could indeed live forever? Would we come together to create a peaceful world with no need to fight over resources and control of land or, would we fight and turn the Earth into a world of chaos and misery? The hollywood movies we watch certainly don’t paint a pretty picture, and if you watch the news, things aren’t looking much better now.

Looks like we may have our chance to find out with researchers all over the world rushing to use the latest sciences to bring us into an entire new world with immortality being the norm.

Daily mail writes:

A Russian entrepreneur who heads a hi-tech research project called ‘Avatar’ has contacted billionaires to offer them immortality.

Itskov claims he will personally oversee their immortality process, in exchange for an undisclosed fee.

Itskov, a media entrepreneur, claims to have hired 30 scientists to reach this goal – and aims to transplant a human brain into a robot body within 10 years.

You have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality. Our civilization has come very close to the creation of such technologies: it’s not a science fiction fantasy. It is in your power to make sure that this goal will be achieved in your lifetime,’ says Itskov in a letter delivered to billionaires listed in Forbes magazine.

You can read more of that story over at dailymail.com but also, check out this story at SFGate.com featuring Ray Kurzweil, famous for his theories of the ‘Singularity’ or, the act of humans merging with technology to form one super intelligent, strong, disease resistant being that can live forever.

SFGate writes:

Ray Kurzweil, a world-renowned scientist and author of The Singularity is Near, thinks the world as we know it will be unrecognizable in 20 years.

One of the changes he thinks are possible: Scientists may finally crack immortality.

“I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies’ stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, aging,” hewrites in The Sun. “Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever. Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively.”

Kurzweil, whose fans include Bill Gates adn Bill Clinton, makes a number of other substantial claims, such as humans being able to replace all failing organs with artificial ones. He says we’ll be able to scuba dive for hours without oxygen, and write entire books within minutes thanks to advanced nanotechnology.

Oh, virtual sex will also be commonplace in the not-so-distant future.

Kurzweil’s absurd-sounding proclamations stem from the fact that technological progress is growing at an exponential rate.

“Computer technology and our understanding of genes — our body’s software programs — are accelerating at an incredible rate,” he writes. His theory of the Law of Accelerating Returns, suggests there will be another “billion-fold” increase in technology over the next quarter century.

You can read more of that story at sfgate.com/technology