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Medical technology is advancing so fast, that a partner in Google's investment department believes that as long as we can live for another 20-30 years, we'll be able to make it to the ripe old age of 500 without too much difficulty. His reasoning? The ultra fast development of new medical technology, some of which he believes, will make current techniques and procedures look rudimentary within just a few years.
“If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes,” said the venture capitalist and Google investor, Bill Marris, who is sitting on a near half billion dollar fund that he's looking to invest on behalf of Google's venture capital branch.
Although Google has a vested interest in healthcare and brought Maris on to help spearhead development in that area of science, his interest goes far further than that. He's a trained neuroscientist with experience working in a biomedical lab at Duke University and he thinks that the next 20 years are going to see us break through into whole new regions of medicine that will reshape the world entirely.
“Twenty years ago, without genomics, you could only treat cancer with a poison,” Maris says. “That’s really different from, ‘We can cure your cancer by reverse-engineering a stem cell.’ You can now legitimately invest in a company that could cure cancer,” he said (via Bloomberg).
Considering this guy is 40 years old, he must be doing something right
Indeed Google has investments in nearly 300 startups and will put another $425 million into new and existing partners this year alone, making it one of the biggest investment firms in the world. As has been pointed out though, it's not doing it for the money, but for an insight into where the world of bio-mechanical technology is going. Maris believes that we're moving towards a world of nanobots and customised medicine, whereby treatment is personalised to you as the patient, rather than the catchall prescription approach we use today.
Google wants to do more than just fund this development though, it wants to help the startups of today and tomorrow develop their products. In its partnership with some fitness application companies, Google helps streamline the technology and make it more user friendly, which in turn helps improve uptake and the amount of time people stick with the software.
The plan for now is to keep pushing the boundaries of what Google and its partners can achieve. And of course, last long enough to see it.
“We actually have the tools in the life sciences to achieve anything that you have the audacity to envision,” said Maris. “I just hope to live long enough not to die.”
KitGuru Says: Most people wouldn't mind living a little bit longer, but there are a lot of societal problems that could come with people living to 500 years old. Old ideas don't die out with their generations and it could take far longer for entrenched prejudices or other issues to fall out of favour. How do you guys think the world would be affected by such a move?
Image source: Wikimedia
Maybe the rich will be able to prolong their lives, but the average joe won’t get a look in. But extending health is only part of the equation. Joints, teeth, brain cells all wear out or break down. The body has built in decrepitude and will likely fail in other ways if obstacles are beaten by science. Nature has a nasty habit of finding out how frail and mortal we actually are.
Joints and teeth are easily replaceable. Cells are the basic issue, and that’s what people think will be solved.
I agree though, probably only the rich will be able to prolong life significantly.
But assuming that we could all live to 500, I think the biggest issue would be work. We won’t be able to employ everyone for hundreds of years, nor have everyone provided for if they don’t work. We will need a complete redefinition of how we sustain ourselves.
Edit: That and overpopulation. If people won’t die, it will become a serious problem.
Yes! You are correct about over population. But then we should pass a law where you can only have one child maybe 2 if you pay fines bla bla bla, you know what I mean with all that. Then after you have your children, your tubes will be cut where you can never have anymore. And you need to pass a certain test in order to have a child. Where maybe you have to have a college degree or make so much money a year. This way we could also raise the global iq ( remember iq isn’t everything tho, so iq can’t be the only way to test ) I think we need something like that now, stupid people are having way to many kids, it is killing the planet. I may sound cruel, and you might think of me an asshole. But if we could live to be 500+ We need a way to control population.
Or we need to expand into space. Colonize other planets where we need to pop out babys like there aint no tomorrow. Give me your ideas people, how would you go about this problem, I game mine, give me yours?
I think that overpopulation is actually a less interesting problem. As you say, it’s easily solved by having fewer children, finding more places to live at, making better use of resources. Easier said than done, sure, but the solutions are rather clear.
But what do we do in those 500 years, that’s a real issue. These days, we study to around 20, then work 40-50 years, then hopefully use our pension funds to enjoy what remains of our lives. But if we lived to 500, would we want to work for, lets say, 400 years of that time? And if not, how would we sustain ourselves? Personally I think that few people would look forward to 400 years of work, especially when seniority will become pretty meaningless. This, to me, is a much more interesting problem than overpopulation, and I don’t have a good idea how to work towards a solution for it.
You do bring up some interesting points there. But even if you do get the perfect job, one that is play and no work, it would still get old and tiring after a hundred years of it. Yes, there are still workaholics that would love to work 400 years, but those are few and far between. I mean some people could go to college and get there degree in say electrical engineering. They work for 60 years and that person is tired of it. He could spend some years exploring the galaxy ( albeit we have the tech for this to be possible ) and since he has a degree and experience. he can keep the ship up and running. by that time he would be 200 years old, worked his dream job, saw wonders of the galaxy and still has 300 years left. But that is just one person in who knows how many billions of people. That is a major problem now that you brought it to my attention, an interesting one non the less. I could see suicide rates going way up in these times as well. It would be cool to see how all this plays out. Hopefully I will be around long enough to be the guy that gets to see it from the beginning and gets to see the universe.