Sputnik Futures - Hacking Immortality: New Realities in the Quest to Live Forever

To the past, present, and future visionaries who fearlessly explore the frontier of longevity.

Hello, I am Alice, and I am always in a state of wander.

Alice in Futureland is a book series that asks you to wander into possible, probable, plausible, provocative futures.

Consider this book a guide.

Inside, you will discover extraordinary ideas: a cross-pollination of art, science, and culture. Alices aim is to give the future a platform for expression, so everyone can make sense of itand help create it.

When speculating about the future, its easy to get lost in the volume of information. Thats where this book comes in. Alice is designed to break the static flow with a dynamic reading experience, where experimentation and exploration meet.

The ultimate purpose of the Alice series is to foster curiosity.

To enliven our present.

To be accessible to everyone.

To allow for exploration.

And to incite optimism.

So, wheeeeeeeeeee, down the rabbit hole we go!

Is It Simply a Design Flaw That We Age and Die?

Most books or articles on longevity would start at the beginning, offering a historical perspective on humanitys quest for the fountain of youth. But we actually think today is the true beginning.

It is 2020, and we are about to press play on several therapies and solutions that will slow and potentially reverse aging. When we look back one hundred or two hundred years from now, we believe history will show that this was the inflection point in cracking the code of radical human longevity.

We are entering the Fourth Biological Revolution, which will dramatically alter the fourth stage of life: eighty and beyond. Scientists used to call this the red zone, where entropy kicks in and we spiral toward death; but now theyre looking at the probability of an extended health span, the part of life when a person is alive and healthy. This revolution is focused on achieving (near) immortality as biology becomes our ultimate technology in defeating death.

Scientists are playing with a new toolbox of biochemical processes, transcribing and manipulating our unique genetic codes to turn back the years. And we can now determine our GrimAge, the closest known estimate of our true age (and likely expiration date).

There are dozens of immortalists who are researching or investing in the race to end deathor, at the very least, end aging. The cofounders of Google created their own longevity lab called Calico. PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have a vested interest in Unity Biotechnology, one of a few biotech labs looking at the cellular cause of aging. One of the worlds leading geneticists, George Church, cofounded the start-up Rejuvenate Bio, which aims to eventually help humans live to 130 years of agein the body of a twenty-two-year-old.

Biohackers are engineering longevity cocktails based on key compounds like nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), a vitamin B3 metabolite that promotes healthy function of longevity genes, neurobiotics that stimulate brain function, and supplements. Technologists and transhumanists are tapping artificial intelligence and biological implants to prepare for digital immortality.

In the past thirty years, there have been many great breakthroughs in science, technology, and medicine. We have moved away from the mechanistic approach to genetics to understand that the genome is much more fluid in nature, capable of being greatly influenced by things like nutrition, environment, and emotional state. This has sparked a greater sense of personal responsibility for our health. And our cultural interest in longevity is working alongside science as we learn our biomarkers and attend to our emotional wellness, embracing a more holistic model of aging.

Lets pause a moment on the word immortality. Some skeptics believe nothing is immortal. Science tells us that some plant and animal species reach biological immortality, holding on to their youthful characteristics until the unfortunate time of decay. Digital eternalists believe we can upload our minds for future generations to download and chat with us. Others believe our consciousness is immortal and are bent on coding the entire neural network of the human brain into some form of immortal cosmic dust to rocket into outer space, where it will roam our galaxy for eternity. Whatever your take, we at Alice in Futureland like to think of immortality not as a fixed goal but rather an organic process we are striving to perfect.

Hacking Immortality ventures through the looking glass of our pursuit to live foreveror at least, as Ray Kurzweil says, to live long enough to live forever. Think of this as a visit with geniusthe mavericks, optimists, pragmatists and visionarieswho are stretching the biological boundaries of mortality in a quest to enable greater health, longer life, and prosperity.

There is no better time for failure than now. Some of these ideas are experiments, some are even moon shots, but all, in the end, will move us closer to a longer, healthier, more energetic life. Yes, there will be ethical, social, geopolitical, financial, and environmental challenges to such a radical change. But while we humans create problems, we also solve them.

Arthur C. Clarkes Three Laws of Forecasting:

• When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
• The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This book, like science, doesnt have the one answer or solution, but it maps the possibilities available today, and in the very near future, so that we can begin to shape our own destiny. Perhaps in one hundred or two hundred years from now, culture will look back and reflect on this moment of discovery, trials, successes, and failures, and realize this was the new dawn of humanity. Hopeful? Yes. Because the future always comes; we cant stop it. But few people participate in the dialogue. My advice to you: Participate. The optimist in us believes we are in for an exciting ride.

Flipping the Evolutionary Script from Life Span to Health Span

In 2013, Time ran a provocative cover with the headline Can Google Solve Death? Fast-forward a decade, and the longevity movement is reflected everywhere: in the movies we make, the buildings we design, and of course, our own biology.

In this chapter we will introduce some of the pioneers, dreamers, and innovators who are reshaping the narrative of aging. But in order to leap to the future, we must start at the beginning. Why? Because you were once a single cell. And that one cell contained all the biological intelligence youd ever need.