Living Forever
After reading the article, "Should We Live Forever?", respond to the prompt on Padlet.
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A Futurologist Perspective on Living Forever
Esteemed futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson, told The Sun he believes humans are very close to achieving "immortality" – the ability to never die. He claims that people born after 1970 should be able to live forever.
Humans have been trying to find a way to dodge death for years. Ancient Greek alchemists tried to create a "philosopher's stone" that would let people live forever, but humans have yet to beat death. However, Dr. Pearson tells The Sun that there are a number of different ways we could live forever – as long as you can make it to the year 2050.
Renewing Your Body Parts
Pearson reveals that one way to extend life would be to use bio-technologies and medicine to "keep renewing the body, and rejuvenating it". "No one wants to live forever at 95 years old, but if you could rejuvenate the body to 29 or 30, you might want to do that." This could be done in several ways, including genetic engineering that prevents (or reverses) the ageing of cells. Alternatively, you could replace vital body organs with new parts. Many scientists around the world are working on creating human organs using 3D printers loaded with living cells, which could one day make human organ donors redundant.
Living in Android Bodies
Dr. Pearson thinks it's likely that we'll extend our lives a different way: robots. "A long time before we get to fix our body and rejuvenate it every time we feel like, we'll be able to link our minds to the machine world so well, we'll effectively be living in the cloud," he explains. "The mind will basically be in the cloud, and be able to use any android that you feel like to inhabit the real world."
He says that in 50 years time, we might be able to hire an android anywhere in the world and upload your consciousness into it. This means that even when your original body dies, you'd still be able to use your digital mind – stored on a computer – and live in the world using highly realistic robot bodies. "You can take any android body and they will look human-like, and download whatever mind you want. You could share one with someone else, or have one yourself, or own dozens of them.
Living in the Virtual World
But if our minds are online, do we even need robot bodies? We could all just live in a computer simulation quite happily, according to Dr. Pearson. "You could spend most of your time online in the virtual world. "If you're online all the time, you could have a fantastic life online. It would be all virtual, so you could have anything you want. You could link your mind to millions of other minds, and have unlimited intelligence, and be in multiple places at once.
Excerpts from the Fox News post "Want to Live Forever? You Just Have to Make it to 2050".
Humans have been trying to find a way to dodge death for years. Ancient Greek alchemists tried to create a "philosopher's stone" that would let people live forever, but humans have yet to beat death. However, Dr. Pearson tells The Sun that there are a number of different ways we could live forever – as long as you can make it to the year 2050.
Renewing Your Body Parts
Pearson reveals that one way to extend life would be to use bio-technologies and medicine to "keep renewing the body, and rejuvenating it". "No one wants to live forever at 95 years old, but if you could rejuvenate the body to 29 or 30, you might want to do that." This could be done in several ways, including genetic engineering that prevents (or reverses) the ageing of cells. Alternatively, you could replace vital body organs with new parts. Many scientists around the world are working on creating human organs using 3D printers loaded with living cells, which could one day make human organ donors redundant.
Living in Android Bodies
Dr. Pearson thinks it's likely that we'll extend our lives a different way: robots. "A long time before we get to fix our body and rejuvenate it every time we feel like, we'll be able to link our minds to the machine world so well, we'll effectively be living in the cloud," he explains. "The mind will basically be in the cloud, and be able to use any android that you feel like to inhabit the real world."
He says that in 50 years time, we might be able to hire an android anywhere in the world and upload your consciousness into it. This means that even when your original body dies, you'd still be able to use your digital mind – stored on a computer – and live in the world using highly realistic robot bodies. "You can take any android body and they will look human-like, and download whatever mind you want. You could share one with someone else, or have one yourself, or own dozens of them.
Living in the Virtual World
But if our minds are online, do we even need robot bodies? We could all just live in a computer simulation quite happily, according to Dr. Pearson. "You could spend most of your time online in the virtual world. "If you're online all the time, you could have a fantastic life online. It would be all virtual, so you could have anything you want. You could link your mind to millions of other minds, and have unlimited intelligence, and be in multiple places at once.
Excerpts from the Fox News post "Want to Live Forever? You Just Have to Make it to 2050".
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