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WELLESLEY, Mass. (AP) -- Ray Kurzweil doesn't tailgate. A man who plans to live forever doesn't take chances with his health on the highway, or anywhere else.
As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea. He also periodically tracks 40 to 50 fitness indicators, down to his "tactile sensitivity.'' Adjustments are made as needed.
"I do actually fine-tune my programming,'' he said.
The famed inventor and computer scientist is serious about his health because if it fails him he might not live long enough to see humanity achieve immortality, a seismic development he predicts in his new book is no more than 20 years away.
It's a blink of an eye in history, but long enough for the 56-year-old Kurzweil to pay close heed to his fitness. He urges others to do the same in "Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever.''
The book is partly a health guide so people can live to benefit from a coming explosion in technology he predicts will make infinite life spans possible.
Kurzweil writes of millions of blood cell-sized robots, which he calls "nanobots,'' that will keep us forever young by swarming through the body, repairing bones, muscles, arteries and brain cells. Improvements to our genetic coding will be downloaded via the Internet. We won't even need a heart.
The claims are fantastic, but Kurzweil is no crank. He's a recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT prize, which is billed as a sort of Academy Award for inventors, and he won the 1999 National Medal of Technology Award. He has written on the emergence of intelligent machines in publications ranging from Wired to Time magazine. The Christian Science Monitor has called him a "modern Edison.'' He was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. Perhaps the MIT graduate's most famous inventions is the first reading machine for the blind that could read any typeface.
This excerpt was taken from an article by Live science. I found it intriging. I guess each of us has to examine our lives and ascertain if we have achieved the quality of life that would benefit from living to such a ripe old age. Many questions arise from this article, any comments? Deb (Moon)
As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea. He also periodically tracks 40 to 50 fitness indicators, down to his "tactile sensitivity.'' Adjustments are made as needed.
"I do actually fine-tune my programming,'' he said.
The famed inventor and computer scientist is serious about his health because if it fails him he might not live long enough to see humanity achieve immortality, a seismic development he predicts in his new book is no more than 20 years away.
It's a blink of an eye in history, but long enough for the 56-year-old Kurzweil to pay close heed to his fitness. He urges others to do the same in "Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever.''
The book is partly a health guide so people can live to benefit from a coming explosion in technology he predicts will make infinite life spans possible.
Kurzweil writes of millions of blood cell-sized robots, which he calls "nanobots,'' that will keep us forever young by swarming through the body, repairing bones, muscles, arteries and brain cells. Improvements to our genetic coding will be downloaded via the Internet. We won't even need a heart.
The claims are fantastic, but Kurzweil is no crank. He's a recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT prize, which is billed as a sort of Academy Award for inventors, and he won the 1999 National Medal of Technology Award. He has written on the emergence of intelligent machines in publications ranging from Wired to Time magazine. The Christian Science Monitor has called him a "modern Edison.'' He was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. Perhaps the MIT graduate's most famous inventions is the first reading machine for the blind that could read any typeface.
This excerpt was taken from an article by Live science. I found it intriging. I guess each of us has to examine our lives and ascertain if we have achieved the quality of life that would benefit from living to such a ripe old age. Many questions arise from this article, any comments? Deb (Moon)
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Re: living to 120 years of age, would you want to?
Wed, February 22, 2006 - 10:11 AMi don't know about ingesting 250 supplements. I thought I was doing quite a bit with my regime of supplements. Seeing that this scientist is a busy bee, he might need all those pills to be the super-thinker that he is.
His theory on nanobots is fascinating and i wonder if having control at a molecular level is really not that far beyond us. If Buddhist monks can control their body temperature with meditation, what can we do if we had a bit of direction and clear instruction over our own bodies?
I would like to hope that at some point the supplements can be reduced to a more managable amount... I would miss real food and can't imagine life without the pleasure of eats.
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Re: living to 120 years of age, would you want to?
Fri, February 24, 2006 - 5:44 PMsign me up for the 120+ year life span. I have many things I plan to do before I die. For that matter, I'll go for "immortality." Why not? That way, if I ever want to die, I'll be able to choose my time of death. -
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Re: living to 120 years of age, would you want to?
Sun, February 26, 2006 - 1:18 PMI on the other hand can't imagine living up to 120. I have a hard time dealing with the stupidity of our country's leaders as it is. Makes me want to find a high powered rifle and climb a high tower, (just kidding) the frustration is that high at times. Of course the high tower would have to be in the state of DC and near a large white house. Ha!. Seriously though what I found most interesting about the article was the nanobodies going around in my system fixing the compromised organs and cells. We have watched this on Scifi for quite some time now and since I am somewhat of a conspiricy theororist I half to wonder just how close we are to this very thing and if the pharmacutical companies haven't already done it and nixed it. Not to mention the so called ethics of the powerful religious fanatics, and this my friends scares me more than the present government . Or are they one in the same? What are us Liberals to do? moom
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Re: living to 120 years of age, would you want to?
Sun, February 26, 2006 - 2:33 PMTo be honest, as morbid as it sounds I think that 50 years (70 years max) is decent time to spend on the planet. Maybe it's the time spent as a CNA during my teens in geriatric hospitals or my parents dying when I was young - I have no idea why not living forever appeals to me.
I do know that I want to give myself the acknowledgement of the different spans in my life. Like savoring my youth, being more confident now at 32 then any part of my life, knowing the urgency to not put the things off that I want to do with my life (trying :)) and to be as happy as possible before I eat dirt. I look forward to going old and whatever scary changes that may come if I live past 70. For me, to not grow old or begin a tedious race to prevent it (other then general commonsense upkeep such as eating well/care/excercise/medicine/learning) is a cruel trick on the mind. Mind you, I'm not doing the old hag dance as to how great it is to grow old, get wrinkles, breasts sagging, hurt more and slowly losing your body/mind but I think that age and experience has as much value if not more then the young?
So! Now that speech is over - the answer is "No, I don't want to live to 120, I want to appreciate and do interesting things with the little years that I have left" :-P -
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Re: living to 120 years of age, would you want to?
Tue, March 21, 2006 - 10:28 AM"To be honest, as morbid as it sounds I think that 50 years (70 years max) is decent time to spend on the planet."
I used to think the same as well when I was young Pippy, but now at 43...
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Re: living to 120 years of age, would you want to?
Wed, March 22, 2006 - 10:26 AMP- You bring up a very good point. I love the wisdom that comes with age. It is a truthful kind of wisdom. I too worked in nursing homes and despite all the shit you have to put up with, if you listen to these elderly people when they are lucid you can find some great things. I am 51 at the present time and clearly do not think like I did at 35. I enjoy the wisdom of my age. Not so crazy about the physical changes but oh well. I take care of my mother, she is 71 and in the beginning stages of Alzheimers, not fun. She says, " when I am crazy enough to not know where I am, just put in a home". I say, "when I am crazy enough not to know where I am, SHOOT ME! So living to 120 in this day.....I say no way. If they come up with and let the public in on a cure for this disease then maybe. By the way just to pass on info to the young.... get all the metal fillings out of your mouth, don't use any kind of non stick surface pans, and throw away the aluminum foil. Metals contribute or may cause this disease. I have only one metal filling left to be replaced. Allowing this disease to conintue with out giving the public a cure is equal to genocide. Which I feel may be the point. Not a point I, as a conspiracy theorist, am fond of. Moon -
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Re: living to 120 years of age, would you want to?
Wed, June 18, 2008 - 9:02 PMI'd like to revive this topic, since we are talking about a very similar issue at our monthly gathering this Sunday in Santa Monica 5 PM (6-18-08; see the event listing nearby on this tribe page). I hope to see you there!
Whether or not you come to Sunday's meeting, feel free to carry on a discussion (either before or after Sunday's meeting) by posting your own ideas in this thread, or in the nearby thread called "Should we & can we cure Aging?"
Here's how I framed the topic this month:
NEAR IMMORTALITY FOR US ALL? Does society have a moral obligation to vastly increase the resources dedicated to curing biological aging? What benefits and burdens would agelessness have for individuals and for society? Would you want the option to live, in good health, nearly forever? (Assuming you could avoid death by severe injury, accident, violence, contagious disease, etc.)
Most people in our society agree we should support at least some research into ameliorating the effects of aging, particularly when the research promises a quick payoff in the form of treatments for specific diseases. What is much more controversial is the mandate, as some argue, to pour massive amounts of money into the attempt to understand the underlying mechanisms of aging and to preemptively intervene in them-- and do so for as many people as possible-- right now. We had a war on polio and on cancer; should we have a "war on aging," too? What if we funded this war on the scale of, say, the war in Iraq? The results could be a huge ethical boon, the halting of the death-by-aging of tens of thousands of people each day. A number of researchers think this is achievable. As the "law of unintended effects" would have it, though, there would be a downside. Is it worth it?
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See you Sunday!
Brian
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Re: living to 120 years of age, would you want to?
Wed, June 18, 2008 - 11:58 PMAs long as they were a pleasant 120 years I wouldn't mind. As things stand now though, it often seems like 32 is enough :)
