SALON: IMMORTAL—SHOULD WE LIVE FOREVER?

“Life is short”, as many people say. Although some people live longer than others, the average life span of a human is 78.7 years. We all know that death is coming for us, whether that be tomorrow, or in another 70 years. Death is a defining factor of human life—one of few conditions experienced by all—but yet we seem to do everything in our power to delay it, or stop it altogether.

In the past, medical research and innovation strived towards fighting disease to ensure that humans could live out their expected life span, but more recently technological and medical companies are funneling billions of dollars into a new type of research: human immortality. As the viability of these advances increase and life expectancy shifts, so too will our long-held beliefs about life, death, and the time in between. Living forever as we are—in physical bodies—would radically change all industries, increase populations, demand additional resources, but running parallel to youthful blood transfusions are efforts to integrate tech and bodies more completely. Modern prosthetics and artificial intelligence suggest that keeping physical bodies healthy may not be the only way to live forever.

For many of us dying is our greatest fear, so how do we begin to reconcile a life without death? Just because the technology exists, do that mean we should use it? Ultimately, the question is, is it a good idea for humans to achieve this goal?

Suggested Readings

• "The Responsibility of Immortality: Welcome to the New Transhumanism," Wired
• "4 bizarre ways people are trying to beat death and aging," AJC
• "The age of immortality is coming, and it’s going to suck," Tech in Asia
• "Scientists could one day make humans immortal," New York Post
• "Silicon Valley’s Quest to Live Forever," The New Yorker