A few days ago, Ray Kurzweil (photo ©null0) spoke at the Wall Street Journal CIO Network conference telling about the progress waiting for us in the future. The famous futurist, who in December 2012 started working with Google, has spoken of nanotechnologies and biotechnologies that already in 2030 could radically change the lives of human beings, strengthening our bodies and our minds. Kurzweil also spoke of immortality and has a plan to reach it.

Ray Kurzweil started working with computers in the ’60s, the era in which these machines were huge, difficult to operate and for today’s standards had a very limited power. He saw the enormous advances in miniaturization made over the decades and today can have in his pocket a a computer more powerful than the first ones he worked with.

Thanks to his considerable experience, for Ray Kurzweil it’s not difficult to see a not too distant future in which artificial intelligence will be comparable to that of humans and nanomachines will exist that will be immersed in our bodies to strengthen them in various ways. At the CIO Network conference has also predicted that in the ’30s of the 21st century, the human mind will expand thanks to the integration with computers and the Internet so at least part of it will be in the cloud.

Ray Kurzweil is about to turn 66 years since he was born on February 12, 1948, so the problem for him is to survive long enough to enjoy those advances. If he’s still alive in 2030 he’ll be 82 years old, an age after all not that advanced by today’s standards in the most advanced nations. However, Kurzweil has no intention of relying on luck or good genes, on the contrary he’s very active in keeping his body in an optimal state.

Already in his book “The Singularity is Near” Ray Kurzweil wrote that he takes more than 250 dietary supplements every day and receives intravenous therapies which also consist of other supplements that are injected directly into his bloodstream. Kurzweil believes in cutting fat consumption and keeps his body in shape. He recently stated that he undergoes regular medical tests and his method works because his body is younger than his age.

However, for Ray Kurzweil, all of these measures are only one way to survive the next years waiting to be able to undergo more sophisticated and radical therapies. He thinks his current body is only the 1.0 version of what will be a day thanks to nanotechnology and biotechnology that will be developed over the next few decades. Even Google seems to believe it because in September 2013 launched project Calico, which is specifically intended to achieve longevity and even immortality.

If Ray Kurzweil is right, even partially, in the coming decades there will be radical changes that will force us to even rethink what it means to be human. If in the meantime we can avoid destroying ourselves, either directly or because of the destruction of the ecosystem we live in, we’ll have the opportunity to become transhumans with a potential that today we struggle to even imagine.

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