A growing number of tech moguls are trying to solve their biggest problem yet: aging.
From reprogramming DNA to printing organs, some of Silicon Valley’s most successful and wealthy leaders are investing in biomedical research and new technologies with hopes of discovering the secret to living longer.
And their investments are beginning to move the needle, said Zoltan Istvan, a futurist and transhumanist presidential candidate.
The stock market is tanking, North and South Korea are on the brink of war, and a cartoon character from a dystopian future is the most popular candidate for US President at the moment. But don’t despair. While most things are garbage, there are some things in the world that aren’t. Like this adorable kid who just got his own high-tech bionic hand.
Nine-year-old Josh Cathcart was often bullied in school for having just one hand. But he’s about to become the coolest kid in school, thanks to his new i-limb, developed by a company called Touch Bionics. The hand can be programmed via an iPad app.
“I made myself a bagel yesterday. I can open bottles and packets with it. I can stack up blocks, I can build Lego with it and I can pull my trousers up,” he told The Guardian. While he’s not the youngest to ever get a bionic hand, he’s the youngest that this company has fitted the device for. He’ll grow out of it in about a year and need a new one, and his parents have started fundraising to pay for it.
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“We have a few cyborgs on staff. Ben Popper is arguably the reporter best known for peeling back his skin to insert a piece of technology, which he chronicled in his feature, Cyborg America. But others have gone under the knife. I wanted to know why. You know, because I have crippling FOMO.”
Biology is simply not the best system out there for our species’ evolution. It’s frail, terminal, and needs to be upgraded. In fact, even machines may be upgraded in the future too, and rendered as junk as our intelligences figure out ways to become beings of pure organized energy. “Onward” is the classic transhumanist mantra.
No matter what happens, to move forward in the transhumanist age, we need to let go of our egos and our shallow sense of identity; in short, we need to get over ourselves. The permanence of our species lies in our ability to reason, think, and remember who we are and where we’ve been. The rest is just an impermanent shell that changes—and it has already been changing for tens of millions of years in the form of sentient evolution.
An interview on transhumanism done by London Real:
Zoltan Istvan — Transhumanist — PART 1/2. FREE FULL EPISODE: http://londonreal.tv/zoltan-istvan This week’s guest on London Real is Zoltan Istvan, US Presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party. Istvan’s stated aim is to “change the conversation” on transhumanism.
Transhumanism could be described as the use of technology to enhance human capabilities, both mental and physical.
As Istvan points out in this interview, the ultimate goal is transcending biological death.