Will we live longer lives in the future? According to Ray Kurzweil, it’s only a matter of time until technology begins successfully tackling age-related disease—and life expectancy grows longer and longer. At some point, technology will annually add more than a year to our life expectancy—allowing us to indefinitely increase lifespans, and perhaps eventually live as long as we want.
“We will get to a point where our longevity, our remaining life expectancy is moving on away from us. The sands of time will run in rather than run out,” Kurzweil says.
How will this happen? We’re now learning to reprogram biology to cure disease and repair the body. This will accelerate in coming decades and be followed by the nanotechnology revolution.
Through nanotechnology, we’ll be able to “transcend the limitations of biology” by using nanobots in the body to combat anything from pathogens to cancers. Nanobots will even perform microsurgery. What seems like science fiction today may be science fact tomorrow as science and technology converge to accelerate progress in these areas more rapidly than expected.
“What is now a trickle of clinical applications will be a flood in 10 years, when these technologies are again 1,000 times more powerful. They will be 1,000,000 times more powerful than they are today in 20 years,” according to Kurzweil.
For years, Ray Kurzweil has been giving fireside chats at Singularity University. Now, some of his best questions and answers will be released every Thursday on Singularity University’s Ray K Q&A YouTube channel. Check back each week for the latest video.
