7 replies to this topic

[lakerfan4life11]

I was just wondering what people predicted nanotech and biotech will allow humans to achieve when it comes to rejuvenation and life extension and the possibility of indefinite lifespan being reached would look like by the year 2030? do you think we'll have these technologies and readily available or not readily available and what would life be like in the year 2030?

[Cameron]

If we can get AGI, thorough analysis of negligible senescent species and closely related aging species should be possible in a short period of time. This would give the necessary changes for cellular therapies and gene therapies to bring about rejuvenation. Additional molecular machinery for advanced error correction should be able to completely eliminate decay of the information in the DNA strands. IMHO, this should be possible given a few decades, even without AGI, if enough funding were provided. Given negligible senescent biological tweaking and going beyond that by enhancing DNA maintenance with advanced error correction, should pretty much allow for indefinite lifespan.

Whatever remains should be manageable with custom molecules or molecular machines designed to deal with whatever remains. Even in the impossible case that some waste was un-recyclable, machinery could be designed to export it and transport it outside the body.

Of course as always funding likely won't be adequate, and billions will die due to the delay in the arrival of the necessary therapies. Hopefully proof of concept in some animal, can spark the politicians into action(most of them are pretty old, seeing immortality around the corner and being afraid of missing that bus, will surely cause them to do this even if there's opposition from the public.), and allow for adequate funding to occur.

[niner]

I was just wondering what people predicted nanotech and biotech will allow humans to achieve when it comes to rejuvenation and life extension and the possibility of indefinite lifespan being reached would look like by the year 2030? do you think we'll have these technologies and readily available or not readily available and what would life be like in the year 2030?

2030 is twenty years from now. Twenty years ago was 1990, and we know what the world was like then. In some ways, it wasn't wildly different than today, but we hadn't decoded the human genome, and iPS cells weren't even a glimmer in our eyes. The Internet had existed for a number of years, but the hypertext protocols that would become the Web were just being assembled by Berners-Lee. The accumulation of human knowledge is accelerating, so we can expect to see more change in the next twenty years than in the last.

I think that biological science and nanotech will both continue to advance. In order to cure aging, we need much deeper understanding of our biochemistry. We have been extending the lifespan of the average person for some time now, and I expect this will continue and probably accelerate. The role of nanotech in life extension will, I believe, be less than some expect. I think that we will see more advanced materials, including such things as biocompatible structural materials, neural interfaces, and implantable sensors, but I do not expect to see nanobots in this time frame. I expect the creation of new organs and tissues to be more advanced than the in situ repair of old ones. We may see a period where people are living to three digit ages with a hodgepodge of new organs and old. Organ transplant surgeons will be very much in demand. The very old in 2030 will not be like young adults. That will take a lot longer to achieve. In 2030, death will still be a commonplace event, though many more people will live to very old ages. I expect a fairly long intermediate period where people continue to age in various ways as we discover problems that don't show up until one is, for example, 150 or older. The technologies needed to extend life will be available to all, but they won't be cheap, and you will generally be expected to pay for them yourself. More people will be able to afford them in 2030 than might be expected by today's standards. The world will be a wealthier place overall, and much of the world's economies will be thriving, though there will also be losers. One of the biggest drivers of economic change will be revolutionary developments in clean energy production and storage.

[Reno]

Definite Changes
1) The most noticeable change will be more noninvasive surgeries. Doctors will be able to do more and more without actually having to cut you open to work on you. That alone will increase life expectancy.
2) Targeted drug therapy. Most diseases will have drugs specifically targeted for their removal. Since each person is different each drug will be tweaked according the to person's physical needs.
3) 24/7 physical vital monitoring. Today your doctor can put a monitor on you to record all relevant vitals over a certain time period. Tomorrow you'll be able to have your vitals monitored via a smart device. Who knows, maybe you can have the fee added to your cellphone bill.

Possible Changes
1) Nanotechnology based removal of age related calcium and plaque deposits. This alone would increase lifespans of people with heart disease. It would also improve the quality of life for most all seniors.
2) If there isn't a means by which organs can be repaired there will most likely be a means for stemcell based organ creation. New organs are grown and tailored for the individual.
3) Might be a little far fetched in twenty years, but complete eradication of human to human transmitted viral infections.

2030 is twenty years from now. Twenty years ago was 1990, and we know what the world was like then. In some ways, it wasn't wildly different than today, but we hadn't decoded the human genome, and iPS cells weren't even a glimmer in our eyes. The Internet had existed for a number of years, but the hypertext protocols that would become the Web were just being assembled by Berners-Lee. The accumulation of human knowledge is accelerating, so we can expect to see more change in the next twenty years than in the last.

I think that biological science and nanotech will both continue to advance. In order to cure aging, we need much deeper understanding of our biochemistry. We have been extending the lifespan of the average person for some time now, and I expect this will continue and probably accelerate. The role of nanotech in life extension will, I believe, be less than some expect. I think that we will see more advanced materials, including such things as biocompatible structural materials, neural interfaces, and implantable sensors, but I do not expect to see nanobots in this time frame. I expect the creation of new organs and tissues to be more advanced than the in situ repair of old ones. We may see a period where people are living to three digit ages with a hodgepodge of new organs and old. Organ transplant surgeons will be very much in demand. The very old in 2030 will not be like young adults. That will take a lot longer to achieve. In 2030, death will still be a commonplace event, though many more people will live to very old ages. I expect a fairly long intermediate period where people continue to age in various ways as we discover problems that don't show up until one is, for example, 150 or older. The technologies needed to extend life will be available to all, but they won't be cheap, and you will generally be expected to pay for them yourself. More people will be able to afford them in 2030 than might be expected by today's standards. The world will be a wealthier place overall, and much of the world's economies will be thriving, though there will also be losers. One of the biggest drivers of economic change will be revolutionary developments in clean energy production and storage.

When you give people the tools to create change they use them. We saw that first hand with the internet. People were given tools to create websites. Overtime this evolved into social networking, elibraries, online stores, online banking, filesharing, user centered news, etc. If tomorrow a compiler was released for atomically precise machinery you would see the same situation. It would take ten or twenty years, but you'd see cures for this, fixes for that, new markets rise and old markets fall. You said it yourself that human knowledge is advancing at an ever increasing rate. If an assembler is created there will be a massive priority shift through every aspect of human society. An assembler solves the problem of food shortages, fuel shortages, global warming. Just about every problem the world faces today becomes an afterthought. If an assembler was created the public would immediately realize the risks and potential of such a device. You'd see communities of molecular designers build up around it. At that point life extension will become a function of what you know, who you know, and your own personal cognitive abilities. It's much like today. Anything on the web is there for the taking it's just a matter of having the ability to take it.

I guess what I'm saying is I agree with you on much of what you say. I just see change coming about in a broader form. I don't see a utopia, at least not in the next 30 years, but I do see the tools for forming a utopia being made available.

Edited by bobscrachy, 11 May 2010 - 05:51 AM.

[Elus]

I think the next twenty years of nanotechnology related development will bring about a new era of personalized medicine. It might not be hard to lower the cost of sequencing a person's genome such that one can more easily evaluate the effects of drugs on one's body and the susceptibility to certain diseases.

Biomonitoring devices were also mentioned in the above posts. I believe that one's phone will transform into a device which monitors one's vital signs. There's a great TED talk about it. Also, if one were able to implant small biosensors within the body, one could get rich data about one's health and send that information to an analysis center in real time. Or perhaps one's phone could become that center for analysis. This will be one of the main benefits of such acceleration of computational and information storage power.

The advance of such devices alone will be a tremendous step forward because it will allow us to detect disease before it gets to a fatal stage. Can you imagine the reduction in mortality rates from that advance alone?

Here's to a brighter 20 years.

[chris w]

I expect the creation of new organs and tissues to be more advanced than the in situ repair of old ones. We may see a period where people are living to three digit ages with a hodgepodge of new organs and old.

Ok, I understand this may be kind of a dumb bio-tech question, but isn't there a possibility that the new made organs will act "old" if surrounded by unrejuvenated environment, like taking some kind of ques from it to adjust their function ? If we had to make it all in just one take, that would suck massively I guess. Please enlight me on this issue in a few words.

Edited by chris w, 11 May 2010 - 01:27 PM.

[niner]

I expect the creation of new organs and tissues to be more advanced than the in situ repair of old ones. We may see a period where people are living to three digit ages with a hodgepodge of new organs and old.

Ok, I understand this may be kind of a dumb bio-tech question, but isn't there a possibility that the new made organs will act "old" if surrounded by unrejuvenated environment, like taking some kind of ques from it to adjust their function ? If we had to make it all in just one take, that would suck massively I guess. Please enlight me on this issue in a few words.

Good question. Cells react in very important ways with their cellular neighborhood. Putting young cells in an "old" environment might make them act old in at least some ways. This has been noted with stem cells. I don't know if terminally differentiated cells react to their environment in the same fashion, but they probably do to at least some extent. If you have an entire organ that consists only of young cells, my guess is that these environmental cues will not be such a problem. Nearly all cells in the organ will be surrounded by other young cells. I'm talking about short-range communication here, between one cell and a relatively small number of its near neighbors. There are probably also long range environmental effects, transmitted by some sort of soluble factor like a secreted protein. We will need to learn about them, and learn how to counter them. This might have substantial benefits even for people who have all their original organs.

[Luna]

I expect the creation of new organs and tissues to be more advanced than the in situ repair of old ones. We may see a period where people are living to three digit ages with a hodgepodge of new organs and old.

Ok, I understand this may be kind of a dumb bio-tech question, but isn't there a possibility that the new made organs will act "old" if surrounded by unrejuvenated environment, like taking some kind of ques from it to adjust their function ? If we had to make it all in just one take, that would suck massively I guess. Please enlight me on this issue in a few words.

I think another good question would be: If you replace one organ but keep another, can it excite the system and cause the rest not be able to keep up and collapse?

Like a child trying to run with a grandparent, the child pushes and pushes and the grandparent collapses.