Can we become immortal with technology ?

Can technology provide us the answer to most of our questions? I’m sure it can. For this we just have to look at the history of the evolution of technology. Where were we, in Circa 1993, and where are we today. The Web Browser in the form of Netscape (Mosaic to be more precise) had revolutionized the way we would access the internet. Today we have apps. While the web browsers were generic in nature, the apps are more specific.

Now, where are we going with this? Google has just got clearance to test the driverless vehicle in Nevada. If this succeeds, which I’m sure it will, the next generation of cab drivers would be headless. By that I mean no cab drivers. Further, our own cars would be on automatic. Which means while we read the paper in the back, the car will navigate us to a place we want to reach. It may seem odd, for a while, but we will get used to it.

Computers are getting more intelligent (if I may use that word). While our brain is a massively parallel processing unit, computers are essentially reaching there with neural nets. The place where they beat the human brain is in the calculations per second. While a PC today can do billions of calculations per second, the human brain crawls at 200 calculations per second. Maybe evolution did not destine us to calculate. And maybe, that’s the reason why we invented computers. But now they are expanding their reach into image processing, language understanding, the arts and the like.

Techno-evangelists like Ray Kurzweil predict that by the year 2019 we will have a 1000$ computer to match our brain. And that is 100% of our brain (You may reminisce that we don’t use 95% or more of our brains in a lifetime) Seems challenging, doesn’t it. Now most of these computers would be put to good use. They will be smart enough to be our assistants and would carry out things without much fuss. We are already aware of personal assistants like Siri (Apple) and Majel (Android). Now imagine them with the smarts.

Advancement in medical technology like nanobots (to clean up the blood stream) and noninvasive jabs are already here. Robots are creating other robots in Japanese factories. New virtual reality glasses have just been released. Hardware manufacturing will utilize the third layer (height) to create complicated, interleaved chips. What about DNA and Quantum computing? Well, research is on its way. I think we should have a demonstrable prototype by 2020.

What about Spirituality? Well, some scientists agree to the fact that there is a spiritual spot in the brain, tickling which, we may be able to experience what we do while meditating. Sounds like a shortcut, doesn’t it?  Death itself will be delayed by so many life enhancing drugs and other contraptions. But will we ever be able to transcend death with the help of technology? You tell me.

Best Regards,

Guru30