Hacker News Reader

Comment by vaksel | Hacker News Reader

I'm fairly young, so hopefully they'll be solutions by the time I get old.

Lets face it, we are in an exponential technological curve, go back 100 years, and probably 90% of stuff in your house didn't even exist back then.

Then take into account that people want to live forever. So hopefully in the next 100 years(I'm 20 now, but chances are the current generation will most likely live to be 150), we'll develop something that can either rejuvenate us, or store our memories, or cloning.

View on HN

  Lets face it, we are in an exponential technological curve, 
  go back 100 years, and probably 90% of stuff in your house 
  didn't even exist back then.

Actually, I think there are very few things in my house that didn't exist a century ago. There are a few important items, for sure: refrigerator, AC, microwave, computer, cell phone, CD/DVD players and associated media, automobiles. There are probably a few things I'm forgetting, but there is so much more than that in my house that's virtually no different than what was around in 1908: clothing, wood floors, ironing board, closets, stuffed animals, blankets, plates, silverware, drawers, photographs, tables, chairs, beds, doors (my house was built in 1924, so this list could go on and on and on). For that matter, I think the vast majority of things in my house would have been present in similar forms in any number of centuries past.

I think the prospects of medical advances that will lengthen lifespans is fascinating, but I also think people tend to lose perspective on how the times really aren't as different as they think they are. We end up thinking we're special because of the times we live in, and it's just not the case (no special criticism of you, of course - just an observation spurred by your remark).

You forgot the super important invention called doors, roof, and windows.

But that's the thing our sciences have taken a huge leap forward in the last 100 years. Another 100 years should bring plenty of new inventions. I mean look 200 years ago, if you got sick they tried to exorcise the sickness away.

The more important point is about advances in genetic engineering. That's been going on for maybe 30-40 years, at best. If the pace picks up a little, what the grandparent says (significantly larger life spans) may well be a reality.

we'll develop something that can either rejuvenate us, [...] or cloning.

I never understood how cloning could make someone live longer. If you can't transfer your soul/conscience into the clone, it's not going to get you anywhere.

well,for a heart failure patient,he could have a new cloned heart!

Just like in the movie The Island, where a powerful insurance company has clones of all its customers. Those clones stand ready to provide for potential failing organs in the body of their real-life counterparts.

Immoral as a concept. Excellent as a sci-fi movie scenario.

I highly doubt that we're in an exponential technological curve.

But it might be nice if we were!

Many measures of technological development are increasing exponentially: computer processor cost performance, solar cell cost performance, resolution of FMRI, DNA sequencing cost per base pair,....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com