Technological development stuns me from time to time. Well not really. Replacement tissue grown on mice, printed tissue (you all watched The Fifth Element), gene therapy, nano-robots fixing damaged cells. It’s all becoming a reality.
Ray Kurzweil says that technological development will eventually bring us immortality. Typical lifespan of a human being will take a few leaps, to a point, where we’ll no longer know what death is.
Will this bring us a different life style, a new social order, new culture, utopia? Happiness? Or maybe just a bunch of people bored out of their minds living their long lives. Perhaps too long.
Do we need immortality? Do we even want it?
Do we need it? Not really. It would probably cause no end of troubles, espacially overpopulation. But do we want it? I sure do! I want to see what will become of humanity, what technological marvels will we invent, will we explore the universe … And if I get bored, I can always commit suicide.
The immortality is mostly considered in the Transhumanistic kind of way. Most likely, not the living tissue kind.