“15 years from now, we’ll be adding more than a year every year, not just to infant life expectancy, but to your remaining life expectancy, so as you go forward a year, your remaining life expectancy will move away from you… The sands of time will be running in, not out.”

Ray Kurzweil, in his keynote speech at GDC 2008 last week, is predicting that if we live to 2023, then we may live forever. He says that the rate of life extension is a geometric curve which is just now starting to take off. The influence of nanotechnology and information technology on medicine and lifestyle has just started to be recognized. As an example he referred to 4 different drugs which are currently in testing which will “fix” the “fat gene” (insulin response) and allow our overfed population to avoid obesity.

Ray has been remarkably reliable with his predictions in the past, so I don’t want to dismiss this one as fairy dust…

However I still think change will always need to come from within, no magic pill will “fix” our lives or our health for us. It is up to us to keep up the quality of our lives through study and self refinement. I believe that there is still a lot to be learned about the mysteries of the mind and the workings of Qi for instance, I’m hoping that the next 20 years will lead to a revolution in the understanding of both.

For more details about Kurzweil’s speech, check out the report on ohgizmo.com

I was thrilled to be in the audience of Ray’s Keynote. It sure gave me an up-beat mood for the rest of the week!