Future thinking

The year is 2035. Jeremy Kyle is still going strong, but the headlines are different. No more ‘Who is the real father of your baby, me or my dad?’ Don’t be silly, incest is so noughties! Aside from the more unfortunate members of society still being paraded on television for our entertainment, everything has changed. Think more ‘Who’s the father of my baby, my husband or the Robot Butler?’ Okay, a little farfetched I’ll admit. But this kind of scenario, according to futurist Raymond Kurzweil, is a genuine possibility. In his documentary Transcendent Man, Kurzweil makes a series of predictions about how the advances in science and technology will shape our lifestyles of the future.

Kurzweil’s vision of how the world will change in our lifetime is a radical one. Not only does he believe that the current rate of scientific progress will lead to us becoming physically integrated with computers (we’re talking USB ports in our foreheads) he also suggests that a point will come when we will be able to cheat death. As most of his work is inspired by a burning ambition to bring his father back to life, this should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt, but, having said this, there is no doubt that there are foundations to his claims.
The rocket which took the first men to the moon had less processing power than a Nokia 3310. Admittedly, that’s an unfair example, as that particular phone was a masterpiece in engineering, but it proves the point that as technology continues to rapidly advance, so does the potential for us to do things that only a few years ago would have seemed outrageous and impossible.
So what implications does this view hold for our lifestyles of the future? While the prospect of cheating death may be a step too far for most of us to embrace, there is no doubt that medicine and genetics will dramatically improve in the years to come. Will it reach the point at which parents-to-be are able to ‘design’ their unborn baby, deciding on its looks and personality traits through the click of a button? Is that even a choice we want to be able to make? As well as introducing new ethical debates, these questions go to show just how different life will be for our generation. We cannot know for certain the choices we will have to make in the future, but what is definite is that technology will give us the opportunity to make the most of our lives, and even extend them.

But is the possibility of eternal life even an appealing one? Surely a normal lifetime is enough to fulfil all the ambitions that we may have? Personally, I think that living too long would begin to get a tad tedious. I would be forced to spend my days doing nothing but watching Jeremy Kyle. Who knows, I might even make an appearance: ‘128 years young and desperate to be a father for the ninth time’.