Memories of the 28th Century

The One Who Dies Last Wins

I realize that I wrote about this a while back, but it might be a good time to revisit the matter. As I am sure you know, one of the foremost experts in longevity declared a few years ago that the first person who would live to be 1000 years old probably was already alive. I don’t know whether he was right, but that may turn out to be true; I’ll let you know in about a thousand years.

Even if humans don’t start making it to a thousand, there ...

Aging is a more interesting subject than critical judgment, so I'll forget the other one for now. Have you noticed that some people look old before they hit forty, while others look youthful into their seventies? Even more interesting, some parts of bodies age faster than others. We all know about telomers, but this link tells of methylation of genes, as part of the aging process in addition to stopping the activity of genes, and it also tells of differential aging rates. http://io9.com/scientists-discover-p...ffn-1449085569 ...

I already explained that following trends until they end is usually a winning strategy for predicting the future. By looking at trends that already exist we can make predictions that might be accurate. Individual trends are simple, but putting them together is more interesting.
In high technology the trend for the next century will be toward Quantum computing and time travel and trans-dimensional travel.

In government the present trend is toward centralization of power. This ...

As a general matter, anything that leads to longer life and/or better health is ethically good, but the steps that will lead to especially long lifespans may have some ethical problems for some people.

It has been suggested to me that the matter of transplants has ethical pitfalls, but transplants are a stopgap measure. The long-term solutions all involve using an individual’s own DNA and culturing new parts with the same DNA, but there are people for whom that is not an option, because ...