I’ve heard famed inventor Ray Kurzweil give his “Acceleration of Innovation” talk twice now and each time he tickled the audience with a rather fantastic notion: live another 20 years or so, and you’ll live forever.

Recently, the concept has received some business press: first in Portfolio’s “Never Say Die” (December 2007), then again in The Economist’s “How to Live Forever” (January 3, 2008). According to Kurzweil, “Our lives will extend exponentially,” assisted largely, perhaps, by advances in artificial intelligence.  Essentially, he argues that the work of life extension scales.  In the context of an individual life, each additional moment of life expectancy that innovation yields allows more time for anti-aging efforts; at some point, assuming accelerating progress, one expects each incremental interval to yield an additional equal interval (then more) of life expectancy. And immortality ensues.

The concept has also led to a neat turn of phrase, this one from the bearded and hopeful researcher Aubrey de Grey: “longevity escape velocity.” Here it is in context:

Dr de Grey’s reason for thinking that some people now alive may see their lives extended indefinitely is based on the hope that those few extra years will see further discoveries and improved life-extension technologies based on them—a process he describes as achieving “longevity escape velocity”.

Dr. de Grey cleverly ties the challenge of defying death to that of defying gravity. Appropriate, I’d say.

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Photo credit: Escape Velocity, originally uploaded by Lonesome Cowboy Bill

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