- Most people know Ray Kurzweil as an IT boffin. He is
a pioneer of flatbed scanners, print-to-speech software for the blind and
commercially marketed speech-recognition software. And as if that isn't
enough, he is known for his IT predictions.
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- Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Marvin Minsky
described Kurzweil as a "leading futurist of our time" - so it
should come as no surprise that Kurzweil's latest book is about health
and longevity.
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- Kurzweil co-wrote Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough
to Live Forever with Terry Grossman, founder and medical director of the
Frontier Medical Institute, a longevity clinic. The book purports to make
the scientific case that immortality is within our grasp, thanks to modern
technology, and that it can be reached via three so-called "bridges".
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- The first bridge relies on the latest medical research
into ageing and how to counteract the process with "nutritionals"
(food and food supplements), meditation and exercise.
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- The second bridge is about bio-engineering and how we
will soon be able to grow a new heart in situ, or be vaccinated against
diseases that kill millions of people, such as cancer.
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- The third bridge is where we step into more familiar
Kurzweil territory: it is about the benefits of technologies such as nanobots,
strong artificial intelligence and full-immersion virtual reality, of the
kind experienced in the blockbuster film The Matrix.
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- Health and technology, it turns out, have been twin passions
of Kurzweil's for 21 years. At 35 he was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes,
and found the necessary insulin injections made him gain weight, exacerbating
his health problems. Being a restless inventor, Kurzweil wasn't about to
let the condition get the better of him.
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- "I read all the scientific literature and came up
with my own approach," Kurzweil says. "I have been free of any
indications of diabetes since."
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- His methods might seem bizarre, but he insists there
is solid reasoning behind them: to Kurzweil, reprogramming biochemistry
is much the same as reprogramming computers. Having noticed the failings
of his own body, Kurzweil was a little disappointed with the inefficiencies
of Human Body Version 1.0, the flesh-and-blood creation designed by nature.
Watching under a microscope, he saw his own white blood cells surround
a pathogen and destroy it. But what struck Kurzweil was the sluggish response:
the process of killing a germ takes more than an hour. He believes that
in the future, nanobots - tiny robots implanted in our bodies - will do
the same job in seconds.
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- Neuronal responses don't impress Kurzweil either. The
connections in our brain compute at 200 transactions per second, which
might have served the human race well over the years, but is millions of
times slower than the electronic circuits that power computers.
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- Not only that, but the human body, particularly the heart,
breaks down too easily. All these things can be improved through technology,
says Kurzweil.
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- When we cross the third bridge, he says, nanobots will
replace our digestive systems. We will dispense with our heart and replace
it with nanobots that shuffle oxygen and carbon dioxide around our bodies.
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- In Kurzweil's future, we will be able to upgrade our
bodies over the internet, downloading new programs to make us fitter, stronger
and healthier. The Human Body V.1.0 is suited to Palaeolithic times and
is urgently in need of an upgrade.
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- Unsurprisingly, his claims have caused consternation
among some observers. And his assertion that he expects to live forever
might be aimed more at grabbing headlines than grabbing hold of the future.
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- But Kurzweil insists that the inherent risks of adopting
these technologies will be worth facing. And for a 56-year-old man with
a genetic predisposition to heart disease and type-2 diabetes, he is doing
pretty well. According to numerous physiological measures, Kurzweil has
the body of a 40-year-old. And he's getting younger all the time.
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- - The Guardian
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- Copyright © 2005. The Sydney Morning Herald
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- http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/with-robots-you-can-live-for
ever/2005/07/08/1120704565094.html?oneclick=true
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