Immortal fiction becoming fact

Long before Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon searched Florida in vain for the fountain of youth, legends of its existence flourished. Since then, humanity’s search for immortality has been similarly fruitless.

In recent years, however, what once seemed like fiction is closer to becoming fact.

Research on an enzyme called telomerase, for instance, has focused on its ability to maintain the protective “caps” at the end of chromosomes, potentially halting the process of aging.

An extensive report compiled in 2008 and published in the journal Nature concluded that the development of an anti-aging drug was a “possibility,” if not a certainty.

However, the field of cybernetics may yield quicker results than medicine.

British futurologist Ian Pearson, for one, says he thinks human consciousness will be transferable to a computer by about 2050, enabling people to live indefinitely inside the bowels of a machine.

“As our knowledge of neuroscience and nanotechnology increases, we will get much better at connecting IT to our nervous systems,” Mr. Pearson explains.

“By 2025, we will be able to augment memory for people with Alzheimer’s. By 2035, we will see an industry rise to provide brain add-ons that increase memory, improve our senses or add processing capability, as well as picking up thoughts, relaying them to the Net and bringing answers to queries we are thinking even before we could type or vocalize them.”

After that, he says, microscopic nanoparticles will come into play.

“By 2040, nanotechnology will be able to make links to individual synapses in the brain. I imagine something like a fluid full of nanoparticles could be injected into the brain, and each synapse could be monitored by our external IT.”

According to Mr. Pearson, a full working replica of the brain will be possible by about 2050.

“If the computer has a model of every neuron in your brain and can pick up the activity at every synapse, then it will be possible to initiate a two-way link between your brain inside your head and the replica one in the computer, which could run far faster, possibly millions of times faster,” he says.

“Gradually, your mind would reside more and more in the computer, with its enormous capability, and less and less in your head.”

So what happens when the organic body wears out? Mr. Pearson claims death will be an “inconvenience but nothing more,” with little perceivable difference in one’s subsequent mental processes.

“After attending your funeral, you carry on life,” Mr. Pearson notes dryly. “Death will no longer be a big career problem.”

Fellow futurologist Peter Cochrane says he thinks immortality will happen “sooner or later,” although he is less sure it will occur by 2050.

“The question here is not if, but when, and in what form?” Mr. Cochrane asserts. “Will it be a full transfer or a selective one? And will we make ’backup copies’ of ourselves periodically throughout our lives?”

Whatever form the process takes, Mr. Cochrane is confident that the race is on in earnest between “in vitro” and “in silico” life.

Even the mere possibility of such technology begs the question - who gets to be immortal? Will the world be divided unfairly between mortals and immortals?

“At first, it would be extremely expensive and only a few people with lots of money could have it,” Mr. Pearson says. “But after that, it would very quickly fall in price. This isn’t a technology that could be kept secret by the rich. For a while there will be immortals and mortals, but it would roll out to everyone in a few decades.

“In fact, with the environmental advantages of living electronically, it might be encouraged, and it is even possible that old people ’migrate’ as their bodies become a liability, by letting their bodies die off,” he says.

There are practical considerations to be taken into account. How, for instance, might immortality affect a relationship or marriage? And what of those who would seek to use it for nefarious ends?

Would life even have any meaning without death?

“The answer to that question is well beyond human ability to get right,” Mr. Cochrane says.

Perhaps what is needed is “a symbiosis of man and machine,” he speculates, giving us “a new intelligence to contemplate and model the future.”

Though few would say no to an increased life span, there are those who would shun eternal life. Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges wrote a well-known story in which those who had discovered the fountain of youth became so bored with their immortality they began a new search - for the fountain of death.

“The Epic of Gilgamesh,” one of the oldest surviving works of world literature, deals in part with the quest of the Sumerian King Gilgamesh to become immortal. Eventually, he realizes he can only live forever by creating great works of culture that will outlast him.

Maybe that’s what we should be aiming for; that and the “immortality” that comes from passing our genes on to our descendants.

Mr. Pearson, however, is more optimistic. If his technological vision becomes reality, he predicts “there will be areas where we will still strive for improvement, no matter how powerful our minds become. We will never be omnipotent, never gods, so frontiers won’t vanish; they just get a bit more challenging.”