Just Two Decades Shy of Immortality...

That's true, Jcomp.

Its just...

I really really want to be part of the generation that watched the Mars Landing on their I-Phones, then twittered about how they burst into tears.

Others may feel that that's really really dumb, but they're old fogeys who don't understand why this generation is better than all the other ones before it.

Don't forget the practicality and availability of things, we did have videophones in the 70's, but they weren't pratical since they were expensive and blurry and I think Cracked.Com made an article about this very same thing...

Zoombie said:

I really really want to be part of the generation that watched the Mars Landing on their I-Phones, then twittered about how they burst into tears.

Others may feel that that's really really dumb, but they're old fogeys who don't understand why this generation is better than all the other ones before it.

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The irony is, when this happens, it will be you who will be the old Fogey

and the young-ons will be scrambling around you with their nuero-implant computer data ports laughing at you and your antique I-phone as they virtually experience the Mars Landing while you 'watch' it on your ancient I-Phone system

Mel...

And I can wave my cane!

Yessss, win win!

Human beings are nowhere near being ready for a scientific advancement of that magnitude. Medical and agricultural advances in recent years have already stretched the resources of the planet to breaking point, there is a finite amount of space and this would exacerbate the problem considerably.

Kurtz said:

Human beings are nowhere near being ready for a scientific advancement of that magnitude. Medical and agricultural advances in recent years have already stretched the resources of the planet to breaking point, there is a finite amount of space and this would exacerbate the problem considerably.

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If you wait until you are ready you will be too old and tired to bother.

Kurtz said:

Human beings are nowhere near being ready for a scientific advancement of that magnitude. Medical and agricultural advances in recent years have already stretched the resources of the planet to breaking point, there is a finite amount of space and this would exacerbate the problem considerably.

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Actually,

I read a couple of decent Sci-Fi books that made a good case for the planet Earth being able to support around 100 Billion people.

Of course, the environment is beyond wrecked, majority of species become extinct, agriculture completely changes going towards heavily processed synthetic food made primarily from ocean algae farms and bacteria, recycling technology advances to 95% reutilization rate, vast majority of the population lives in apartment like complexes that reach into the ground, strict population and breeding control in effect, and Euthinasia is enforced once you cease to become 'productive' to society.

You can slowly see this happening as cities the world over get bigger and bigger. Eventually, we will not be able to move horizontally and we will be forced to grow vertically. And of course we'd have to completely restructure our economy.

You are right in the sense that our 'current' economic and agricultural models cannot support a significant increase of people. What will need to happen is a radical shift and we do have the technology to do it. We'd just completely wreck the planet in the process. But you can make the argument that we are already doing a fine job wrecking the planet.

Mel...

Sometimes you have to look over several decades to see how a collection of small "evolutionary" changes become a revolutionary change:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tracy said:

In January 1946, Gould changed Dick Tracy forever with the introduction of the 2-Way Wrist Radio after a visit to inventor Al Gross. This seminal communications device, worn as a wristwatch by Tracy and members of the police force, became one of the strip's most immediately recognizable icons, and can be thought of as a precursor to later technological developments, such as cellular phones.

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Dt2wrr.jpg

The 2-Way Wrist Radio was eventually upgraded to a 2-Way Wrist TV in 1964.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28543953/

Kurtz said:

Human beings are nowhere near being ready for a scientific advancement of that magnitude. Medical and agricultural advances in recent years have already stretched the resources of the planet to breaking point, there is a finite amount of space and this would exacerbate the problem considerably.

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Once "it" is here, it will take another generation or so before substantial portions of the population get all the treatments to extend their lives. In another generation or two, substantial numbers of people may want to live exclusively in cyberspace (where the risk of death or "disease" is lower than in even an well-maintained human body), and the amount of physical space and power needed to sustain a person's mind in a computer will be insignificant compared to the food and other needs of a human body.

But even so - you think the technology that brings ultra-long-lived human beings won't also bring the technology to feed everyone alive?

There's plenty of food to feed starving people now, there's just not the political will to remove regimes which withhold food from all but their armies.

I keep telling people that we COULD feed all the starving people, we just don't cause its hard to feed people when warlords are fucking your infrastructure up.

Kurzweil's predictions are cool, but count me among the skeptics. I'll grant that he's predicted some stuff in the past and come up with some cool things, but at this point he's become more of a new agey guru-type than anything, spouting his own particular religion.

Pssst - hit the red "f" to play video:
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=194500-1
Raymond Kurzweil at age 17 in 1965 on "I've Got A Secret" (for the first three minutes or so - the rest is a 2006 interview)

Immortality must never become a reality.

I cannot imagine a scenario where politicians live on forever.

Hey, just cause you CAN live forever does not mean that someone won't shoot you.

GeorgeK said:

Then cheer up because eventually the sun will go supernova.

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Just saying but the sun's not supposed to die via supernova cos its mass is too small.

Zoombie said:

Hey, just cause you CAN live forever does not mean that someone won't shoot you.

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But the fate of the one doing the shooting is horrendous. If the shooter is also immortal, then eternal punishment is just......ZOMG

Well this is the point that the nations with the nukes band together and wipe out those without the nukes. The world has plenty of room... if you can annihilate about 2/3 of it.

The world has plenty of room... if you can annihilate about 2/3 of it.

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And you want to live on a radioactive rock. After all, you can't stop the wind or the tides.

Zoombie said:

And I can wave my cane!

Yessss, win win!

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Grandpa Zoombie all sitting on his porch in his titanium Zimmer exoskeleton, griping about kids these days all making nookie in their total immersion sims and getting subsentient nanocrap all over his lawn that starts to eat the flowers. Jimmy next door's got five parents, and where are they?! Nowhere to be seen, that's where!

Kurtz said:

Human beings are nowhere near being ready for a scientific advancement of that magnitude. Medical and agricultural advances in recent years have already stretched the resources of the planet to breaking point, there is a finite amount of space and this would exacerbate the problem considerably.

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We already see fertility rates collapse when a population becomes sufficiently affluent and educated, which will cause human population growth to flatten out over the next 100 years or so (the odd supervirus or energy war will no doubt help too). Biological immortality will see growth drop precipitously further.

benbradley said:

Once "it" is here, it will take another generation or so before substantial portions of the population get all the treatments to extend their lives. In another generation or two, substantial numbers of people may want to live exclusively in cyberspace (where the risk of death or "disease" is lower than in even an well-maintained human body), and the amount of physical space and power needed to sustain a person's mind in a computer will be insignificant compared to the food and other needs of a human body.

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There was a great flash piece I read about this, where uploaded humans are forced to work as telemarketers and living spam filters to fund the processing power to maintain their own existence. Realistically, though, I've banged on before here about what I see as unsolvable ontological boundary to uploading and mind transference: it can only be a copy of you, not you yourself. I think I'll take the biological immortality and pass on the mind-destroying transfer process, thanks.

Zoombie said:

I keep telling people that we COULD feed all the starving people, we just don't cause its hard to feed people when warlords are fucking your infrastructure up.

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Might help if we stop turning productive land over to biofuel production to feed our bloody cars at the expense of bloody people, too.

Once "it" is here, it will take another generation or so before substantial portions of the population get all the treatments to extend their lives. In another generation or two, substantial numbers of people may want to live exclusively in cyberspace (where the risk of death or "disease" is lower than in even an well-maintained human body), and the amount of physical space and power needed to sustain a person's mind in a computer will be insignificant compared to the food and other needs of a human body.

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Oh no, I've seen Ghost in the Shell you'll never get me in one of those cyberbrains. HUMAN LIBERATION FRONT.

We already see fertility rates collapse when a population becomes sufficiently affluent and educated, which will cause human population growth to flatten out over the next 100 years or so (the odd supervirus or energy war will no doubt help too). Biological immortality will see growth drop precipitously further.

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Well first I doubt birth rates are going to descrease that quickly, but anyway, 7 billion human beings is far more than the planet can sustain, unless we severely change our living habits. Until this happens (and it's never going to), I am going to think that biological immortality is best reserved for the little things that live in ponds.

That's why we colonize other planets, Kurt.

I know that if there were a ticket one could buy to a martian plot of land, one I could develop myself, I'd be THERE.

After learning how to survive, of course.

semilargeintestine said:

Not quite the same, but...

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Some fun background info:
http://singularityhub.com/2009/08/07/is-surrogates-movie-getting-closer-to-reality/

Hey, I don't know about you, but I think having a surrogate is an awesome idea.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Humanity has never once been dehumanized by any technology.

No, we blame the technology, the guns and the chemical weapons and the computers...but do we EVER look at the hands that use the technology!?

Personally, I use a computer to experience and create and do what I could not experience and create in real life. I paint pictures with words, communicate and share ideas with people in the other side of the globe, experience stories on a visceral level unknown to any other medium...

If that's not being human, I don't know what is.

I sure know it beats the hell out of farming every day.