>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.