The only problem is, you can't control it. It's not like a nuclear weapon or a submarine, which are by and large obvious and easy to keep track of; a transhuman could simply conceal much of their potential should it be required, and the actual technology involved, once leaked, would be far easier to accumulate and provide. Given the amount of supposedly classified or restricted technical knowledge that was leaked, and the sheer profit potential of this market, attempting to control it would fail just like every other attempt at containing knowledge has failed. It might take a while, but it will inevitably fall.
And, of course, there's the old-fashioned black market...all those AK-47s, tanks, airplanes, and a wide variety of other dangerous technology still manages to get to market even though it's tightly controlled. Why do you think governments are so afraid of dirty bombs, rogue WMDs and other threats? Because every attempt at fully controlling these things does not work and will inevitably fail. Just look at the inability of the world to realistically control nuclear proliferation, the arms trade, or any other illicit venture, and then realize that this technology is so profitable and so powerful that there will be more people trying to get it than there are people trying to protect it.
The thing is, it is a lot easier to get transhuman technologies using the precursors without raising any questions; given that all of their predecessors would be generally medical devices used for the impaired, any research group so inclined could proceed in to these fields using the work already accumulated. There are plenty of very wealthy, very powerful people willing to spend a lot of money to get the things they want, and I can guarantee you that many of them will jump on these as soon as they get the chance.
A shuttle or submarine costs billions of dollars, a specialized launch facility, specialized crew, and a wide variety of other extremely costly infrastructure to operate. The average person can't get to that. However, a person can achieve limited and fully legal human enhancement right now with LASIK surgery or off-label modafinil, and what follows from here will be similarly inexpensive (relatively speaking), similarly easy to obtain, and similarly difficult to track. Attempts to control it will be a costly, losing battle, one that will make the War on Drugs look like child's play.
The question is whether or not you'd rather these technologies be safe, available, and tested or have them fall in to the hands of those who are far more likely to use them to do harm...and the only way to keep them safe is to make them widely available. Otherwise, there won't be anybody to stop some nutjob from using their enhanced abilities to kill huge numbers of people or take something over. The only defense against the dark side of technology is to ensure the people who want to use it for good are one step ahead in the game...otherwise, you're going to lose and you're going to lose painfully.
Yeah...if I don't get it, I die. That's it. Nothing I can do about that one, since that's what would've happened anyways without such an option; there's no reason to worry about such a possibility because if it ends up being the case, it would be no different than if it were never available. At least I'd have the confidence of knowing others would be able to reap that benefit, which is a tad bit better than it being completely unavailable.
Of course, that's also why I'd save my money, invest it wisely, take care of myself and work hard to ensure I have the money necessary to pay for it. The best part is, if I do that, I'll still be well off in the event that I can't achieve indefinite lifespan. It will hardly be anywhere near as good, but it's better than nothing.
That's also true and a very good point; I think their definition of a Singularity is based on the idea that AI will take us there, but if things move ahead faster than expected, it ends up pushing that date forward. I honestly think the Singularity is going to be something we only see in hindsight; I mean, to a person from the year 1800 the time we're living in would appear to be a period of blindingly fast technological and social change (even to a person from the 1950's or even the 1970's for that matter), but to us it is not seen as the same kind of rapid change. Since we are by and large acclimated to this development rather than having it suddenly thrust upon us, it's simply not going to be as noticeable as it would if we were to view it in hindsight.
I'm personally interested in the ramifications of D-Wave Systems' work on their quantum computer; it is a real, actual quantum computer that has demonstrated its ability to solve problems far faster and far more effectively than a regular PC, and given how fast they plan to scale it up, it may have huge effects on everything else. This kind of computer is effectively 30 years ahead of its time, and that's going to mean a lot going down the road.
I don't think we're going to wake up one day and say "We're in the Singularity", but rather it's going to be something we'll look back on 5, 10 however many years later and say "Yeah, that was the turning point."
A lot of it simply hasn't been economically necessary, removing the need to develop new technologies. It has certainly become more efficient and scalable, but the basic technologies themselves work well enough that there has been no impetus to improve them. I mean, the wheel's been unchanged for pretty much its entire history; there's no reason to reinvent it if it works well enough.
But also look at it this way: your computer, your TV and its programming, this website, your internet connection, your MP3 player, your videogame console (if you have one), your cell phone and pretty much all of the medications and medical techniques used by your physician were scarce to nonexistent 15 years ago. That's pretty damn good if you ask me.
Of course, you also answer a lot of questions in your own post: the very recent and very rapid growth in computer and internet technology. Those weren't available in the past, making it difficult if not impossible to achieve progress; good luck creating any kind of strong AI using a supercomputer that's barely as powerful as a modern laptop, let alone the engineering work and number crunching necessary for flying cars, modeling particle physics and testing materials for fusion power, or for building space tourism infrastructure. Honestly, the reason why those things weren't available by the time they were predicted was due to the simple fact that they would have needed the technology we have now to have a shot at making them work.
I'm going to remain optimistic because, honestly, we've done really damn well on a lot of things, and in some places completely surprised people with our progress. We'll design the technologies and then have the pessimists do the quality control and testing to make sure they're safe.
Sure, that's a common view -- most people want to live forever. I just disagree with the wild optimism of Kurzweil's followers. Technology for drastically extending life may just be around the corner, but I think eventually everybody will face death. Just remember that technology can be used for both health and destruction, accidents happen, etc. If nothing else there's the heat death of the Universe as a possibility:) Yeah, I'm kind of hoping we're either going to get an oscillating universe or escape to another one through some unknown, presently technobabble means, although it would be interesting to see what would happen to information processing in the heat-death universe (especially when those quantum actions start occurring at a macro scale).
I would say I'm a follower of Kurzweil, in a very broad sense, but I do see what you mean. "Immortality" in its truest sense would require you to outright overcome the limits of the universe itself, and that's pretty much Godhood we're talking about. Not that it's necessarily impossible, but it's going to take a long time for any physical being to even remotely have such abilities even at an exponential rate of growth. So, for the foreseeable future, you will still be killable even if you don't die of diseases or the degeneration caused by aging.
Regardless of what you do, any physical body is going to be subject to the same general constraints as any other; if you fall in to a volcano, get nuked, get shot or go too close to a star, you're going to die whether you're 50 years old or 50 million. Stuff can still kill you. I think the goal is to have indefinite lifespan; live as long as you want free from aging, illness, or other issues related to the body itself, and then attempt to
But accidents will happen, ones that will overcome your little nano-machines, and that's when you'll need the offline backup. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is fun reading if you haven't read it yet. (I love Down and Out)
I think any person will need a lot of backups of multiple forms just to be safe; that's just good sense from an engineering perspective. I mean, sure there's the debate whether or not the backup is the same person, but at least I have it regardless. It's better than not having it and being unequivocally dead, which as far as I know is a lot more challenging to overcome, especially if you end up falling in to the aforementioned volcano.
Hell, I'd be happy with just knowing that it would be possible to bring me back at some point in the future, let alone actually trying to survive the whole time.
Way I view it is "live forever or die trying"...if I can't do it, so be it. I'll try like hell, but in the end if it's simply not available, there isn't a damn thing I can do. I'm not going to obsess
Ultimately, the only way to really be sure you are you following a transfer from and biological to artificial brain is through memory and conscious continuity; if there's no conscious or memory break between being a person and being uploaded, you can be confident that you're the same person. It would be far less risky from a philosophical standpoint to replace the brain with artificial parts and gradually integrate with a machine than to try to scan yourself and effectively kill off your body and brain.
Either way, this is a while down the road. Hopefully, our biological lives still have a good amount of time left, although I can't deny the thought of being able to live a massively long biological life and communicate directly with various intelligences, both human and artificial is pretty damn beautiful. I could spend an eternity doing that for sure; besides, most afterlives would be like that anyways and I'd rather do that here than in the great beyond, where I'd have to risk punishment for not believing the right way.
I don't see why they're mutually exclusive; either way, we're increasing longevity. If anything, they should both be our goals; increasing longevity through science and technology will greatly increase the amount of skilled and educated people at our disposal to use solving other problems.
Demand would have to be really, really, really high for replacement hearts to even remotely strain resources; it would probably have to be at least higher than the Earth's population. I don't think people would be swapping hearts every few years; maybe every 10, or however long they plan to wait before upgrades, but demand would be cyclical and wouldn't come close to any resource constraints.
I don't.
I'd rather someone make a free choice about themselves than be forced in to doing or being something they don't want; as long as they don't directly threaten or harm others with their decision, they are free to do whatever they wish. That freedom is all I really care about, because it applies just as much to me as it does to them.
And, of course, pretty much every business forecaster is listing the facts: product adoption cycles are accelerating and companies that do not plan for this will be badly hurt.
Obviosuly, in medicine, some factors such as FDA regulation remain, but even that is not enough to slow down advances to the point where they are not hitting the market at a faster rate. However, it's certain that the regulatory process, as well as the additional more tools with which to more quickly assess the safety of these technologies, will be reformed to better suit the new direction of medicine.
It will happen whether people like it or not, and I'd rather us as a society be prepared for it rather than have the rug pulled out from under us because other nations adopted a more progressive stance.
The singularity is not meant to happen in 10 years. At best, it would be happening three decades from now; however, that concept itself is hardly my focus or the focus of many other people. I look at the time between now and then, when advances will
Technology is obviously not linear, especially in hindsight, or else we would be advancing at the same rate throughout history. Technology would be advancing at the same rate now as it did 500 or 5000 years ago. The most obvious proof is in medicine and computing; we would not have been able to achieve decoding the Human Genome in a little more than a decade when the technology at its initiation was, thanks to its linear perspective, expecting it to take far, far longer. Not everything is advancing exponentially, either due to economics or practicality; some technologies are mature and there simply isn't much left to improve, but the technologies that allow accelerating progress are the ones advancing exponentially.
Even so, who knows? We doubled life expectancy in 160 years the first time around, and it had not changed appreciably prior to that for all of human history, so I'm not inclined to believe that it's implausible that it will double again in a similar timeframe. Even if it did, that would still mean living to 170 would be average for most people in the year 2167, and that's pretty damn good no matter what way you look at it.
I'm not going to worry about it either way, that's for sure.
I think it would be scaled up like that, mainly because it makes sense; if the rest of my heart is fine but only a part needs replacement, why go through with a full procedure when I could get the same benefits from a partial one? It would save time and money, among other things.
(I imagine it would also mark the days when heart surgery becomes an outpatient procedure...)
Honestly, it doesn't bother me if this leads to greater disparity. The fact is that it will benefit me, and that is all that ultimately matters. I'm going to have the skills, the money, and the knowledge to take advantage of this new technology and use it to increase my competitive edge, and although this may sound harsh I really don't give a damn if its unfair to everyone else. Fairness is nothing but a myth; life has never been fair and it is neither possible nor desirable to attempt to create it.
Through my work and my hard effort I make myself better...that's really all I'd be doing.
We've gone from mapping the human genome in 2000 to offering basic genomic sequencing, creation of artificial lifeforms, and rudimentary bioengineering in less than ten years. That's pretty damn impressive considering the skeptics of the HGP said the exact same things; it was a "pipe dream", "too expensive", would take thousands of years to complete......and look at how utterly wrong they were. Genetic sequencing is offering insights in to untold numbers of conditions, diseases, and human attributes and it is making its way in to medicine. In 15, hell in the past 5 years we've developed so much in thousands of different fields that it is impossible to even remotely argue that progress is not moving forward at a blinding pace. Today, a cancer patient or similar victim of a serious illness has more tools at their disposal to ensure they will survive than ever before, and it is paying off in saving lives from the horribly painful and prolonged deaths that would have been inevitable only a short time ago.
The world is changing faster and faster whether people like it or not. The only "pipe dream" here is pseudoskepticism, the willingness to doubt things not out of evidence (which is clearly supporting rapid change) but out of fear and misunderstanding. They've been proven wrong again, again, and again and there's no reason to believe they will ever be right.
Hell, in a lot of cases it's faster, cheaper, safer, and better than what I could get in the States. I'm not going to let my health go down the drain because the clowns in the US government want to hold on to some kind of bullshit fatalism about aging or the "sanctity of human life" (which honestly seems to be more a euphemism for killing off old people in favor of the young by denying research in to beneficial fields).
I'll gladly take advantage of other countries' resources, and I'm sure they'll appreciate the business.
I doubt it will remain very expensive; the supply of hearts would not be tied to the supply of donors, as you could conceivably produce a lot of hearts from one person and use them on that person or supply them to multiple patients (especially when combined with advances in reducing rejection and complications from surgery).
I think artificial and grown organs will get rid of a lot of the inequality in the transplant process, mainly because of the ability to utilize economies of scale to cut costs, something impossible when relying on a finite number of transplants.
Nope, I'm 20 and my family has had a history of living in to their 80's and later. Besides, I can always go overseas to get things done; medical tourism's just going to get bigger and better over time.
Yeah, that's my basic goal. Keep myself as is healthy as a way of reaping the benefits of these technologies, with the end goal of some kind of indefinite lifespan. The way I figure it, I'll only be 63 in 2050, so my odds are pretty much 100% as long as somebody doesn't kill me.
And if that happens, well, there wasn't much I could've done about it in the first place.
Honestly, I've wondered about this myself. I think it will really be a personal choice more than anything.
Of course, some people might appreciate the various advantages of each; mechanical hearts, after all, would likely be far easier to customize and adjust post-formation, giving you more control over the device once it's implanted. Also, it may be possible to achieve greater levels of performance with an artificial device than a biological one. The main challenge would be at the surgical step; it would require somewhat more work to ensure the body does not reject the artificial heart.
It's likely that a biological heart would be cheaper than a mechanical one, but at the cost of some performance and ability to modify once it has been grown.
Even non-athletes could benefit from various forms of heart enhancement and engineering; of course, this discovery is currently very rudimentary compared to the longer term potential, but the door would be opened to engineering custom-tailored enhancement hearts for no other reason than to enhance performance, longevity, efficiency, or whatever else a person desires.
There's going to be a lot of money in supplying them, too; the transplant backlog market will shrink pretty quickly once these start entering mass production, so anyone manufacturing these hearts would have to start expanding their offerings to reach out to discretionary rather than medically necessary markets. Organ replacement and organ enhancement would be just another expansion of the discretionary medical market; of course, they would also offer some pretty significant benefits above and beyond the ability to replace aging organs with better ones.
I'm looking forward to it myself.
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The only problem is, you can't control it. It's not like a nuclear weapon or a submarine, which are by and large obvious and easy to keep track of; a transhuman could simply conceal much of their potential should it be required, and the actual technology involved, once leaked, would be far easier to accumulate and provide. Given the amount of supposedly classified or restricted technical knowledge that was leaked, and the sheer profit potential of this market, attempting to control it would fail just like every other attempt at containing knowledge has failed. It might take a while, but it will inevitably fall. And, of course, there's the old-fashioned black market...all those AK-47s, tanks, airplanes, and a wide variety of other dangerous technology still manages to get to market even though it's tightly controlled. Why do you think governments are so afraid of dirty bombs, rogue WMDs and other threats? Because every attempt at fully controlling these things does not work and will inevitably fail. Just look at the inability of the world to realistically control nuclear proliferation, the arms trade, or any other illicit venture, and then realize that this technology is so profitable and so powerful that there will be more people trying to get it than there are people trying to protect it. The thing is, it is a lot easier to get transhuman technologies using the precursors without raising any questions; given that all of their predecessors would be generally medical devices used for the impaired, any research group so inclined could proceed in to these fields using the work already accumulated. There are plenty of very wealthy, very powerful people willing to spend a lot of money to get the things they want, and I can guarantee you that many of them will jump on these as soon as they get the chance. A shuttle or submarine costs billions of dollars, a specialized launch facility, specialized crew, and a wide variety of other extremely costly infrastructure to operate. The average person can't get to that. However, a person can achieve limited and fully legal human enhancement right now with LASIK surgery or off-label modafinil, and what follows from here will be similarly inexpensive (relatively speaking), similarly easy to obtain, and similarly difficult to track. Attempts to control it will be a costly, losing battle, one that will make the War on Drugs look like child's play. The question is whether or not you'd rather these technologies be safe, available, and tested or have them fall in to the hands of those who are far more likely to use them to do harm...and the only way to keep them safe is to make them widely available. Otherwise, there won't be anybody to stop some nutjob from using their enhanced abilities to kill huge numbers of people or take something over. The only defense against the dark side of technology is to ensure the people who want to use it for good are one step ahead in the game...otherwise, you're going to lose and you're going to lose painfully.
Yeah...if I don't get it, I die. That's it. Nothing I can do about that one, since that's what would've happened anyways without such an option; there's no reason to worry about such a possibility because if it ends up being the case, it would be no different than if it were never available. At least I'd have the confidence of knowing others would be able to reap that benefit, which is a tad bit better than it being completely unavailable. Of course, that's also why I'd save my money, invest it wisely, take care of myself and work hard to ensure I have the money necessary to pay for it. The best part is, if I do that, I'll still be well off in the event that I can't achieve indefinite lifespan. It will hardly be anywhere near as good, but it's better than nothing.
That's also true and a very good point; I think their definition of a Singularity is based on the idea that AI will take us there, but if things move ahead faster than expected, it ends up pushing that date forward. I honestly think the Singularity is going to be something we only see in hindsight; I mean, to a person from the year 1800 the time we're living in would appear to be a period of blindingly fast technological and social change (even to a person from the 1950's or even the 1970's for that matter), but to us it is not seen as the same kind of rapid change. Since we are by and large acclimated to this development rather than having it suddenly thrust upon us, it's simply not going to be as noticeable as it would if we were to view it in hindsight. I'm personally interested in the ramifications of D-Wave Systems' work on their quantum computer; it is a real, actual quantum computer that has demonstrated its ability to solve problems far faster and far more effectively than a regular PC, and given how fast they plan to scale it up, it may have huge effects on everything else. This kind of computer is effectively 30 years ahead of its time, and that's going to mean a lot going down the road. I don't think we're going to wake up one day and say "We're in the Singularity", but rather it's going to be something we'll look back on 5, 10 however many years later and say "Yeah, that was the turning point."
A lot of it simply hasn't been economically necessary, removing the need to develop new technologies. It has certainly become more efficient and scalable, but the basic technologies themselves work well enough that there has been no impetus to improve them. I mean, the wheel's been unchanged for pretty much its entire history; there's no reason to reinvent it if it works well enough. But also look at it this way: your computer, your TV and its programming, this website, your internet connection, your MP3 player, your videogame console (if you have one), your cell phone and pretty much all of the medications and medical techniques used by your physician were scarce to nonexistent 15 years ago. That's pretty damn good if you ask me. Of course, you also answer a lot of questions in your own post: the very recent and very rapid growth in computer and internet technology. Those weren't available in the past, making it difficult if not impossible to achieve progress; good luck creating any kind of strong AI using a supercomputer that's barely as powerful as a modern laptop, let alone the engineering work and number crunching necessary for flying cars, modeling particle physics and testing materials for fusion power, or for building space tourism infrastructure. Honestly, the reason why those things weren't available by the time they were predicted was due to the simple fact that they would have needed the technology we have now to have a shot at making them work. I'm going to remain optimistic because, honestly, we've done really damn well on a lot of things, and in some places completely surprised people with our progress. We'll design the technologies and then have the pessimists do the quality control and testing to make sure they're safe.
Way I view it is "live forever or die trying"...if I can't do it, so be it. I'll try like hell, but in the end if it's simply not available, there isn't a damn thing I can do. I'm not going to obsess Ultimately, the only way to really be sure you are you following a transfer from and biological to artificial brain is through memory and conscious continuity; if there's no conscious or memory break between being a person and being uploaded, you can be confident that you're the same person. It would be far less risky from a philosophical standpoint to replace the brain with artificial parts and gradually integrate with a machine than to try to scan yourself and effectively kill off your body and brain. Either way, this is a while down the road. Hopefully, our biological lives still have a good amount of time left, although I can't deny the thought of being able to live a massively long biological life and communicate directly with various intelligences, both human and artificial is pretty damn beautiful. I could spend an eternity doing that for sure; besides, most afterlives would be like that anyways and I'd rather do that here than in the great beyond, where I'd have to risk punishment for not believing the right way.
I don't see why they're mutually exclusive; either way, we're increasing longevity. If anything, they should both be our goals; increasing longevity through science and technology will greatly increase the amount of skilled and educated people at our disposal to use solving other problems.
Demand would have to be really, really, really high for replacement hearts to even remotely strain resources; it would probably have to be at least higher than the Earth's population. I don't think people would be swapping hearts every few years; maybe every 10, or however long they plan to wait before upgrades, but demand would be cyclical and wouldn't come close to any resource constraints.
I don't. I'd rather someone make a free choice about themselves than be forced in to doing or being something they don't want; as long as they don't directly threaten or harm others with their decision, they are free to do whatever they wish. That freedom is all I really care about, because it applies just as much to me as it does to them.
And, of course, pretty much every business forecaster is listing the facts: product adoption cycles are accelerating and companies that do not plan for this will be badly hurt. Obviosuly, in medicine, some factors such as FDA regulation remain, but even that is not enough to slow down advances to the point where they are not hitting the market at a faster rate. However, it's certain that the regulatory process, as well as the additional more tools with which to more quickly assess the safety of these technologies, will be reformed to better suit the new direction of medicine. It will happen whether people like it or not, and I'd rather us as a society be prepared for it rather than have the rug pulled out from under us because other nations adopted a more progressive stance.
The singularity is not meant to happen in 10 years. At best, it would be happening three decades from now; however, that concept itself is hardly my focus or the focus of many other people. I look at the time between now and then, when advances will Technology is obviously not linear, especially in hindsight, or else we would be advancing at the same rate throughout history. Technology would be advancing at the same rate now as it did 500 or 5000 years ago. The most obvious proof is in medicine and computing; we would not have been able to achieve decoding the Human Genome in a little more than a decade when the technology at its initiation was, thanks to its linear perspective, expecting it to take far, far longer. Not everything is advancing exponentially, either due to economics or practicality; some technologies are mature and there simply isn't much left to improve, but the technologies that allow accelerating progress are the ones advancing exponentially. Even so, who knows? We doubled life expectancy in 160 years the first time around, and it had not changed appreciably prior to that for all of human history, so I'm not inclined to believe that it's implausible that it will double again in a similar timeframe. Even if it did, that would still mean living to 170 would be average for most people in the year 2167, and that's pretty damn good no matter what way you look at it. I'm not going to worry about it either way, that's for sure.
I think it would be scaled up like that, mainly because it makes sense; if the rest of my heart is fine but only a part needs replacement, why go through with a full procedure when I could get the same benefits from a partial one? It would save time and money, among other things. (I imagine it would also mark the days when heart surgery becomes an outpatient procedure...)
Honestly, it doesn't bother me if this leads to greater disparity. The fact is that it will benefit me, and that is all that ultimately matters. I'm going to have the skills, the money, and the knowledge to take advantage of this new technology and use it to increase my competitive edge, and although this may sound harsh I really don't give a damn if its unfair to everyone else. Fairness is nothing but a myth; life has never been fair and it is neither possible nor desirable to attempt to create it. Through my work and my hard effort I make myself better...that's really all I'd be doing.
We've gone from mapping the human genome in 2000 to offering basic genomic sequencing, creation of artificial lifeforms, and rudimentary bioengineering in less than ten years. That's pretty damn impressive considering the skeptics of the HGP said the exact same things; it was a "pipe dream", "too expensive", would take thousands of years to complete... ...and look at how utterly wrong they were. Genetic sequencing is offering insights in to untold numbers of conditions, diseases, and human attributes and it is making its way in to medicine. In 15, hell in the past 5 years we've developed so much in thousands of different fields that it is impossible to even remotely argue that progress is not moving forward at a blinding pace. Today, a cancer patient or similar victim of a serious illness has more tools at their disposal to ensure they will survive than ever before, and it is paying off in saving lives from the horribly painful and prolonged deaths that would have been inevitable only a short time ago.
The world is changing faster and faster whether people like it or not. The only "pipe dream" here is pseudoskepticism, the willingness to doubt things not out of evidence (which is clearly supporting rapid change) but out of fear and misunderstanding. They've been proven wrong again, again, and again and there's no reason to believe they will ever be right.
Hell, in a lot of cases it's faster, cheaper, safer, and better than what I could get in the States. I'm not going to let my health go down the drain because the clowns in the US government want to hold on to some kind of bullshit fatalism about aging or the "sanctity of human life" (which honestly seems to be more a euphemism for killing off old people in favor of the young by denying research in to beneficial fields). I'll gladly take advantage of other countries' resources, and I'm sure they'll appreciate the business.
I doubt it will remain very expensive; the supply of hearts would not be tied to the supply of donors, as you could conceivably produce a lot of hearts from one person and use them on that person or supply them to multiple patients (especially when combined with advances in reducing rejection and complications from surgery). I think artificial and grown organs will get rid of a lot of the inequality in the transplant process, mainly because of the ability to utilize economies of scale to cut costs, something impossible when relying on a finite number of transplants.
Nope, I'm 20 and my family has had a history of living in to their 80's and later. Besides, I can always go overseas to get things done; medical tourism's just going to get bigger and better over time.
Yeah, that's my basic goal. Keep myself as is healthy as a way of reaping the benefits of these technologies, with the end goal of some kind of indefinite lifespan. The way I figure it, I'll only be 63 in 2050, so my odds are pretty much 100% as long as somebody doesn't kill me. And if that happens, well, there wasn't much I could've done about it in the first place.
Honestly, I've wondered about this myself. I think it will really be a personal choice more than anything. Of course, some people might appreciate the various advantages of each; mechanical hearts, after all, would likely be far easier to customize and adjust post-formation, giving you more control over the device once it's implanted. Also, it may be possible to achieve greater levels of performance with an artificial device than a biological one. The main challenge would be at the surgical step; it would require somewhat more work to ensure the body does not reject the artificial heart. It's likely that a biological heart would be cheaper than a mechanical one, but at the cost of some performance and ability to modify once it has been grown.
If it exists, there's a fetish for it. So the answer is yes.
Even non-athletes could benefit from various forms of heart enhancement and engineering; of course, this discovery is currently very rudimentary compared to the longer term potential, but the door would be opened to engineering custom-tailored enhancement hearts for no other reason than to enhance performance, longevity, efficiency, or whatever else a person desires. There's going to be a lot of money in supplying them, too; the transplant backlog market will shrink pretty quickly once these start entering mass production, so anyone manufacturing these hearts would have to start expanding their offerings to reach out to discretionary rather than medically necessary markets. Organ replacement and organ enhancement would be just another expansion of the discretionary medical market; of course, they would also offer some pretty significant benefits above and beyond the ability to replace aging organs with better ones. I'm looking forward to it myself.