Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Human Body 2.0: smarter, stronger, with amazing abilities

Futurists Ray Kurzweil and Nanorex Chief Scientist Robert Freitas believe that tiny medical nanorobots expected by late 2020s will provide radical upgrades to our bodies. ?We won?t reengineer our bodies all at once?, Kurzweil says, ?It will be an incremental process accomplished one benign step at a time over the next four decades?.

Today we prevent many diseases through nutrition and supplements, and we look forward to biotech and nanotech breakthroughs expected in the 2010s and 2020s that will replace defective and aging organs with stem cell therapies, genetic engineering, and advanced nanomaterials.

Kurzweil also predicts that in the coming decades, progress in cognitive sciences will enable non-biological intelligence to merge with our biological brains.

As we learn more about our body, experts say we can engineer new systems with dramatic improvements. Freitas believes that by the 2030s, we could create artificial respirocytes that would allow us to hold our breath for 4 hours and sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath.

Even more radical, with respirocytes providing extended access to oxygen, nanobots could remove carbon dioxide from our cells, which would eliminate the need for lungs. Without lungs, we would no longer require breathable air! This will give us incredible abilities. We could live in space and on other planets with little technology help.

In his book, Fantastic Voyage, Kurzweil describes how we could reengineer our digestive system, enabling nanobots to deliver nutrients directly into our cells, eliminating the need for food. To implement this technology, we would wear a ?nutrient belt? loaded with millions of nutrient-bearing ?bots, which would enter and leave the body through our skin.

However, many may want to hang on to their food-eating pleasures, so scientists propose a special digestive tract to receive real food, but bar those nutrients from entering the blood stream. ?Bots would convert this food into molecules and route it into the ?nutrient belt?. This would allow us to eat anything we want ? no harm, no foul.

The next organ on our hit list is the heart, a remarkable machine, but one that is too often subject to failure. Freitas has designed a revolutionary nano-robotic blood cell system that he believes could eliminate the need for a heart.

This configuration would also eliminate need for kidneys, bladder, liver, lower esophagus, stomach, intestines, bowel, and skeleton. We will need to keep our skin, sex organs, mouth and upper esophagus for touching, talking and eating, but scientists believe we could also replace these parts with an exotic ?nano-skin?, which offers greater protection from physical force and extreme temperatures, and may even provide more enjoyable sex and touch.

The most amazing application of this future includes replacing the brain. IBM hopes to reverse-engineer the brain by 2030, and with efforts to capture thought at moment of creation underway at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, forward-thinkers believe we can one day replace neurons with materials that process information at supercomputer speeds.

Will this ?magical future? happen? Forward-thinkers see human body 2.0 as our next evolutionary step which could become reality by 2050. Living in maintenance-free bodies will enable us to direct priorities towards saving the environment and scattering our populations to the stars.

Lots of things are possible.

While a large percentage of the people on this planet are still in danger of contracting malaria or unable to obtain basic education and services I see your concern about a nano-future, affordable by only the ultra-rich, of little value and thus nothing more than a distraction.

I'm far more inclined to vote to quarantine the technology than to encourage it.

Dan,

I strongly agree with you.

However, Futuretalk writes with all the zeal of a Fundie and will likely claim that 'Positive Futurists' believe that technology will solve all of the problems you raise - and that you just need to be more positive like him.


On another topic, I presume your 'Change Data Capture' lecture is only for Oracle User Group Members.

Would the 15th be better to come and see you. I'm only 30 minutes away from the ICC.

Blacknad.

Technology benefits poor people too.

Few Americans die from lack of medicine, food, or facilities. Granted, when new therapies first arrive on the scene, they are a bit pricey, as the firms that produced the new therapies need reimbursement (without this high initial price, new drugs could never be developed).

However, a competitor soon steps in which quickly lower prices enabling insurance companies to include the new therapy for their members, and it becomes affordable by everyone.

?Human Body 2.0? therapies will take place in the 2030s and 2040s, a future time that will not be comparable to today?s crude financial world.

Have faith in a positive future, and it has a greater chance of becoming reality.

FT wrote:
"Technology benefits poor people too."

So do antibiotics and condoms.

To agressively push into an unknown future with a pubic wholly uneducated about its implications; political, economic, social, ethical, etc. is a recipe for disaster.

Every technology has its zealots and that's not a bad thing. But I will argue that the breaks need to be put on your advocacy until the consequences, all of the consequences, have at least been discussed in public by those who will benefit, or suffer, the consequences.

If 1/10th the financial profits were potentially available from selling antibiotics fighting disease would have advocates like you. It doesn't. And the benefits would be greater. This is about money ... not technology.

Our ?magical future? includes every person on Earth. There will be no ?super-race?, or privileged rich. We will become one unified global village facing an incredible future together.

However, as we begin to spread our populations to the stars in earnest ? probably in the 2200s, we may meet other life forms that pose problems for our survival. Running into the Borgs could certainly ruin our day.

FT wrote:
"Our ?magical future? includes every person on Earth."

Hyperbole. Run for Congress.

"There will be no ?super-race?, or privileged rich."

There already is. I live less than a mile from Paul Allen and less then five miles from Bill Gates. There already is.

"We will become one unified global village facing an incredible future together."

And heaven will reign on earth and the dead will rise and pigs will fly. If you are trying to earn your "fanatics badge" you've got my vote.

"However, as we begin to spread our populations to the stars in earnest"

Yep you are way over the edge. We can't even put a man on the moon or fund a meal for a kid in Sierra Leone. Time to come back to reality.

Have faith in a positive future. What else can I say?

FT says:
"Have faith in a positive future. What else can I say?"

I do. If I didn't I'd have an empty bottle of sleeping pills next to my bed.

But having faith in a positive future means the citizens of the planet take control of what that future looks like.

It does not mean some fanatic takes an idea, when we can't even cure malaria, and decides we should be thinking about transporting billions to the stars.

We can't even save the people of one city, New Orleans, from a totally predictable hurricane and you think we are going to go to the stars.

Not yet ... we're not ready.

Goodby all.

Discovery of radium --> radiation as a panacea for all ills. Didn't work out. A construct that violates mechanics practice is probably a tough sell, especially by the billions if not the $billions. Do you have any idea what a silicon fab costs? That merely lays down circuitry.