As usual, there are lists of the best movies for all tastes. In this article I will focus on three:
If we could download our consciousness in a computer or a robot, we could go on living indefinitely inside the hardware and thus achieve immortality. This is what some futurists and supporters of transhumanism hold. But is there any chance that this will come true?
If this were possible, we could also keep backup copies. Thus, in the event of an accident, the dead person could be retrieved and put back into operation with minimal memory loss. As usual, science fiction arrived there first, as in Cory Doctorow's novel Down and out in the Magic Kingdom.
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The third procedure that has been proposed to make us immortal is the following: as our organs deteriorate, we could replace them with artificial organs, thus becoming a cyborg, a being intermediate between man and machine. The process could be repeated as many times as needed, potentially making us immortal.
Just now, this line of research is not very much advanced.
The second method that, according to optimists, will help us achieve immortality, is based on the following idea:
We will soon be able to design tiny robots that, introduced into our blood, will attack and destroy every pathogenic microorganism, as well every cancer cell, leaving the normal cells of the body intact. When all diseases disappear, we will automatically be immortal.
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| Pieter van Lint - Allegory of immortality |
This method is based on the following idea: if we could manage to increase our life expectancy by more than one year per year, we would automatically be immortal. Mathematically, this idea is correct. But is there any chance that it will happen in practice?
One problem is that the increase in life expectancy is slowing
down, and has even reversed.
First, we must clear up a misunderstanding. Two completely independent concepts should not be confused:
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| Herodotus |
As I have explained in previous posts in this blog, some people believe that we are about to achieve immortality. Of course, depending on the way to do it, it might not be applicable to everyone, because it would be very expensive. Perhaps it would just be feasible for a few enormously wealthy people. Or maybe it could be done in a more democratic way, so that everybody would be immortal. Many journalists, politicians, tycoons, philosophers, futurologists, and even ordinary people are convinced that sooner or later all of us, or at least some of us, will be immortal.
This is not a new hope; it comes from deep in the past. One of the oldest known masterpieces of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh, written 4,000 to 4,500 years ago, deals with the quest for immortality. We also have the legend of the fountain of youth, which would give immortality to those who drink from its waters. According to Herodotus, it would be located in Ethiopia, although some say that Ponce de León searched for it in vain in Florida.
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| Arthur C. Clarke |
In a previous post I pointed out that short-term predictions are dangerous, because the expected date does not take long to arrive, and the "prophet" runs the risk that someone (like me) takes a note of the predictions and checks if they really took place.
In this post I am going to apply the same principle to long-term forecasts, where the effect is even more dramatic. Of course, it is more difficult that those predictions are remembered, but there is always someone (like me) who keeps press clippings from 1963 and can check if they were fulfilled.
