At the end of the day humans only have one life on this planet, even more so, humans are very fragile, prone to diseases, destructive and obviously stubborn.
Since the beginning, humans have longed for a long life, the ability to extend life and youth far beyond its current limits. Nevertheless, you have to give humans credit for their ability to increase their life expectancy across the board for the past 200 years or so.
According to our World already in data the human life expectancy is around 72yrs, yet as you are already aware, a selected group of people especially from the wealthier nations have well exceeded this number with some even living for more than 110 years for example Jeane Calment of France living for 122yrs and 164days.
But can humans live even longer? And if you could, for how long would you want to live? 200yrs?500yrs?maybe a full millennium! Though this might seem like a bit of science fiction, technology could enhance to a point where humans could live forever. In fact some futurists argue that if you can make it to 2050 you're probably not going to die. So stay inside please!
Dr. Ian Pearson, a futurist, has argued that by using the power of technology, humanity might be able to merge our minds with machines making our bodies obsolete. You could end up attending your own body's funeral. Pearson paints up the picture of this future, stating "one day your body dies and your brain stops but no big problem because 99% of your brain is still fine, running happily on It in the cloud. Assuming you saved enough and prepared well, you can still use an android as your body from now on to attend your funeral, and then carry on as before, just still you but now with younger and highly upgraded body."
This is just the beginning, in 2050 there will be many ways you can preserve your mind and consciousness. Humans might just switch to a different humanoid bodies, just the same way you might buy a new car with new features.
Thanks to prejecta like neuralink, your mind may just be a few clicks away from downloading yourself into a computer or robotic body. Maybe in a 1000 yrs from now humans might just decide that it is better for humans to live in a massive megastructure that practically generates our own realities.
That is what we are going to explore today in this article. There are plenty of technologies out there that could change the entire direction of humanity posing the question, will humans be able to live forever?
You could live in a brand new android body
Like most of the things in this list, this sounds like something from a science fiction movie right! Well people like the University of Southern Califonia Theodore Berger, Duke University's Mikhail Lebedev and Alexander Kaplan of Moscow University all belive its possible.
There are already companies out there working on ways to link our minds to machines. At the moment, there are more practical reasons for this, like offering those who have mobility disability the chance to live more normal and full-filling lives.
However it can go even further than that. " the mind will be in the clouds and be able to use any android that you feel like, pto inhabit the real world," says Pearson. It could get to a point where you could hire an android body for a day. Rather than travel to a different location, you could just download your mind into an android located there. Or maybe there's a concern that you want to see but the band is in another city thousands of miles away, you can just simply upload pyourself to experience that show. The results of this is that humans would never need the fleshy bodies again.
3D printing limbs and organs
3D printing has come a long way, probably impacting major industry around the world including healthcare.
Just in the past couple of days, researchers from different organisations across the world have found ways to 3D print organs. At team of researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel unveiled a 3D printed heart with human tissue just last year.
Companies like Skorpio Medical have even gone as far as researching on 3D printed limbs. In the near future, you might be able to just renew a body part when it goes bad. Your body gets more and more limited as you grow older. Advances in the biotechnology could see an end to thus. Even better, the genetic Engineering could see the end of aging of cells or completely reverse it altogether. Just imagine when you need a new finger, you just simply print a new one or call a doctor and have them reinstall a new one.
Cryogenic Freezing
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Cryogenic freezing has its own fair share of skeptics, but over the years, the scientific communities have slowly embraced the idea. Now you cannot freeze yourself yet and wake up, but in future there could be a possibility where you would just put your body in ice for an extended period of time to be awakened in a given date or time.
This could come in plenty during journey to a different planet hundreds of light years ahead. Nevertheless, cryogenic freezing is an option for people 0 want to freeze their bodies when they die with the aim of bringing them back during a time period where science makes it possible. However there are researchs that centers around using of the cryogenic freezing to slow down tissue aging.
Creating a virtual world
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I know you've probably heard of it before but we're probably living in a virtual world at list for those who buy simulation theory. However in the coming age of electronic immortality, living in the virtual world may become an alternative to living in the current one. Think of it as an episode of San jupinero in the popular Netflix series of Black Mirror, perhaps in the coming future, androids are extremely expensive but a cheaper alternative can be to have some humans uploaded into a cloud based virtual reality system, a place where you could spend an entire reality living in peace with an avatar of your choosing. Most people already live "on the Internet, " so in most cases, it's just a matter of time.
But what could come after the creation of the virtual world? Though this could happen beyond 2050. Humanity might be able to simulate reality on an universal scale using what is known as matrioshka brains. Based on the Dyson sphere, a matrioshka brain is a hypothetical megastructure proposed by Robert J Brudbury. The idea was proposed when imagining the type of advanced civilization that are out there in the universe as this would be an impressive class B atellar engine employing the entire output of a star to drive computer systems.
Our entire species could be uploaded into this computer system able to sumulate reality and remake the universe as we know it. Though this idea may seem far from reality, the idea of uploading a mind into the computer seemed like a distant fantasy at some point.
Humans could evolve into Cyborgs
One of the lesser known projects that Elon Musk is working on centers on star-up Neuralink. The company has plans to directly link human minds to computers by using a simple noninvasive device that we can all install in our brains.
The current fascination with brain computer interface centres on helping those with neurological mobility issues. However Musk's projects extend beyond that. The eventual goal is to create a "digital superintelligence layer," to link humans with artificial intelligence. As stated in the Neuralink presentation. "ultimately, we can do a full brain machine interface where we can achieve a sort of symbiosis with Al."
But why stop there, development in robotic and prosthetics could open the gates to human-robots hybrids. You may be able to simply to go for preceedure yo get a bionic eye, robotic legs etc, all with features that suits the needs of your wildest dreams.
Do you think humans will be able to live forever? Share your opinions in the comment section.