May 08 2008 / by futuretalk
Category: Other Year: General Rating: 10 Hot
By Dick Pelletier
Imagine living in a body fashioned from “designer cells” that
can never age or get sick; and sporting a mind that thinks millions
of times faster than today’s brain. Though this may seem too
optimistic to happen in just 32 years, experts believe that
nanotech, biotech, infotech, and cognitive science advances over
the next three decades could create this future by 2040. 
Author Ray Kurzweil, in The Singularity is Near, discusses how
new technologies will improve our bodies. Today’s frail body
version “1.0” has a high failure rate; over 50 million died last
year, most from age-related causes. By 2025, projected biotech and
nanotech revolutions will provide a more durable and capable
version “2.0” body, which will be immune to most diseases.
This brings us to version “3.0”; a powerful body made from
nanomaterials, boasting a zero failure rate. Even if a destructive
accident were to occur, technologies expected by late 2030s could
construct a new body with simulations of the patient’s personality
and memories, and allow life to continue. A reconstructed person
may not even realize they had died.
If converting your body to non-biological parts seems unnatural,
it shouldn’t. Today, people routinely install cochlear implants to
improve hearing, titanium hips to strengthen worn bones, and soon
to come, neuron replacements to prevent brain disorders.
(cont.)
Nanorex Chief Scientist Robert Freitas believes that tiny
medical nanobots expected by late 2020s will help us upgrade our
bodies. “However we won’t reengineer ourselves all at once,” he
stresses, “It will be an incremental process one step at a time;
and it could begin with artificial respirocytes replacing red blood
cells, giving us an immense energy boost.”
The next organ to replace could be the heart, a remarkable
machine, but one that is too often subject to failure. Freitas has
designed a heart-replacement system that would eliminate heart
attacks.
Eventually, our re-designed body would not require kidneys,
bladder, liver, lower esophagus, stomach, intestines, bowel, or
skeleton. The last to go would be skin, sex organs, mouth and upper
esophagus, but these too could eventually be replaced with exotic
“nano-skin”, which offers greater protection from physical force
and extreme temperatures, and may even provide more enjoyable sex
and touch.
The most remarkable feature of our new 2040 body focuses on
strengthening our brain. IBM hopes to
reverse-engineer the brain by 2030, and with Howard Hughes Medical
Institute’s efforts to capture thought at moment of creation,
forward-thinkers believe we can one day replace all our neurons
with nanomaterials that process thoughts at supercomputer
speeds.
Foresight Institute consultant John Burch predicts many of these
body changes could begin in late 2030s, and he describes how the
upgrades would be accomplished: A daily pill would supply materials
and instructions for nanobots to format new cells and position them
next to existing biological cells to be replaced. These changes
would be unnoticeable to us, but within six months, we would be
enjoying the benefits of a new body-part.
Futurists see our powerful new 2040 body as the next step in
human evolution; and many believe that this miracle will become
reality in time to benefit many alive today. Living in an amazing
body without fear of unwanted death will allow all of us to enjoy
the many miracles of tomorrow’s “magical future.”
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