How Long Is Immortality?
Richard Koo at the Bioethics blog of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reminds us that we were remiss last year in chronicling the ambitions of Dmitry Itskov. If the name rings a bell, it's probably because Itskov made a big splash in the U.S. in June 2013, with the "second annual 2045 Global Future Congress" held at Manhattan's Lincoln Center. (The first was held in Moscow, in February 2012.) The theme was:
Towards a New Strategy for Human Evolution
Itskov was then a 32-year-old Russian internet millionaire (not, he insisted, a billionaire) who felt unfulfilled by the prospect of mere material success. His slightly spacey shtick combined technological optimism with an emphasis on spirituality. He envisaged creating — by the year 2045 — "avatars" into which we can upload our personalities and loosen the shackles of mere corporeal reality. Spiritual self-improvement would then become the proper work of humanity. "The strategy is based on carrying out two revolutions: spiritual and sci-tech." There is still a promotional video on YouTube, detailing the path to the the era of neo-humanity.
With that, and a willingness to lay out an estimated $3 million, he gathered an endorsement from the Dalai Lama, a feature in The New York Times, and interesting speakers for his $800-a-head extravaganza, which "nearly 800" attended. The event attracted a number of the usual suspects in transhumanist circles (Peter Diamandis, Ray Kurzweil, Martine Rothblatt, Natasha Vita-More), some academics (Marvin Minsky, George Church, Roger Penrose), religious people of various persuasions, and others including James Martin, who gave the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute its start.
The man behind all this explained, in a video interview, that he himself was more of a catalyst and a visionary than a scientist:
I'm creating the concept which can further cause the public demand which can further significantly increase the speed of development of the science.
So: big splash, lots of press (in addition to The New York Times, Forbes, Motherboard, HuffPost, GEN, CNN, MIT Technology Review and more). And since then? Well, pretty much bupkis, far as I can tell. There is a website, 2045.com, which claims to have 33,816 members enrolled (via Twitter or Facebook, or any of three Russian sites). It's been updated with a few relevant news articles (none of the latest ones mention the project), but I see no hint there of a Third Congress. Maybe Itskov fell out with Putin or is off in a retreat in Dharamsala or something.
Koo's Bioethics post also mentions the recent life-extension efforts by Google and Craig Venter, and asks some sensible questions:
- Should we humans be going down this road at all to seek immortality or longer life?
- Do these three projects, announced within the span of a year, portend the privatization of the quest for immortality or longer life?
- Can privatizing the quest for immortality and long life become problematic?
- How about regulating it?
There are serious questions about relying upon the capricious whims of rich individuals to perform actual research. If Itskov has indeed dropped out of sight, that should remind us just how short an attention span can be. But … why did so many take him so seriously?
Previously on Biopolitical Times: