Extending human lifespan, and extending productive human lifespan (the time which you can be a contributing member of society) are both very cool and very hard problems.
I personally doubt that we will get anything close to nano-machines that will crawl around our cells repairing dna. Merely because we have much better tools at our disposal, Viruses!
We are already getting to the point where custom tailored viruses (virii? whatever) can be used to treat autoimmune diseases and certain types of leukemia. A more general approach rewriting cells to address human aging will only be a matter of time (the important question is: is it going to be soon enough to matter in my lifetime).
I believe that once we are able to fully grock tumors (they seems to have swung too far into the immoral cell zone) we will have a much better idea about how to safely extend telomeres in humans.
If anyone wants to listen to people far smatter than me talk about things like this I would highly recommend Futures In Biotech (especially episodes 65 71 73 and 74)
And as you have pointed out logan it's not a question of storage, it's a question of filtering. Deciding on what to stick in long term storage and how to interconnect that with our brains. That is an entirely separate topic, and something that people are going to be very cautious poking at.
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
I personally doubt that we will get anything close to nano-machines that will crawl around our cells repairing dna. Merely because we have much better tools at our disposal, Viruses!
We are already getting to the point where custom tailored viruses (virii? whatever) can be used to treat autoimmune diseases and certain types of leukemia. A more general approach rewriting cells to address human aging will only be a matter of time (the important question is: is it going to be soon enough to matter in my lifetime).
I believe that once we are able to fully grock tumors (they seems to have swung too far into the immoral cell zone) we will have a much better idea about how to safely extend telomeres in humans.
If anyone wants to listen to people far smatter than me talk about things like this I would highly recommend Futures In Biotech (especially episodes 65 71 73 and 74)
And as you have pointed out logan it's not a question of storage, it's a question of filtering. Deciding on what to stick in long term storage and how to interconnect that with our brains. That is an entirely separate topic, and something that people are going to be very cautious poking at.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy