Given the current and ongoing scientific and technological developments, I need to reconsider and reorganize my life as there is a good chance I would be able to live actively until around 150 years old. That is my impression from reading this book.
The authors summarize results from research papers and lectures at conferences and predict the near future of 2030. Topics include shopping, advertising, entertainment, education, healthcare, business and food.
The chapter on the future of healthcare was particularly revealing.
Already, there is a startup that develops a wearable device to monitor the user's health condition with the same precision as an MRI machine that costs five million dollars. This would pretty much eliminate the need for medical checkups and shifts medicine from being reactive to preventative.
Furthermore, genetic engineering enables it to target and correct mistakes of genes that cause diseases and aging. This will dramatically decrease the occurrence of them. If your body parts are deteriorated and cause problems such as tennis elbow, a technology company can print them with a 3-D printer and a robot surgeon can replace old ones with them more skillfully than real surgeons.
Bearing in mind other technology advances as well, the authors conclude: While "Will we be able to live forever?" remains an unanswered question, turning a hundred years old into the new sixty has changed from a question of "if" to a matter of "when."
So, what are you going do with much more time than you had expected? Thanks to the significant rocket science progress, you can travel to the other side of the planet within an hour or so for a price of flying economy.
Alternatively, you can visit there in your own room by using Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) that include not only sight and sound, but also smell and touch. You might as well take an AR/VR site visit to Egypt as that can take you to places not open to the public for preservation reasons.
AR even includes emotions, so you can experience what others feel. For example, a man can perceive exactly how painful a woman could feel when having a period. A white person can also experience what a black person faces in their day-to-day life. That would lead to a more compassionate society.
If your house becomes too old, you can build a new one for quite a reasonable price like $5,000 with a 3D printer in a matter of days.
If you're lonely, you can communicate by telepathy with other minds connected through AI.
All these sound like a science fiction and a bit scary, but as the title of this book says, the future is faster than you think.
