Would you give up your immortality to ensure the success of a
posthuman world?
Answering hard questions at the World Transhumanist conference.
Ronald Bailey | July 27, 2007
"...The final speaker was inventor and self-acknowledged transhumanist
Ray Kurzweil, who argues that "The Singularity is Near." The
singularity is a metaphorical social event horizon in which
accelerating technological trends so change society that it is
impossible to forecast what the world will really be like. Kurzweill
believes that humanity will accelerate itself to utopia (immortality,
ubiquitous AI, nanotech abundance) in the next 20 to 30 years. For
example, he noted that average life expectancy increases by about 3
months every year. Kurzweil then claimed that longevity trends are
accelerating so fast that the life expectancy will increase more than
one year for each year that passes in about 15 years. In other words,
if you can hang on another 15 years, your life expectancy could be
indefinitely long. He projects that by 2030, AI will be ubiquitous,
and most humans will be physically melded to information and other
technologies. Kurzweil argued that we must reject the fundamentalist
desire to define humanity by its limitations. 'We are the species that
goes beyond our limitations,' he declared."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121638.html

Indefinite lifespan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_lifespan

If so, that might alleviate the problem of the very long times for
(sublight) travel between the stars: indefinitely long lifetimes.

Bob Clark