The Future Ain't What it Used to Be

The Future Ain't What it Used to Be

If you’re old enough to remember Yogi Berra, NY Yankees catcher and accidental creator of some of the most memorable wrong comments, you might recognize the title of today’s blog, which is one of his sayings. It was also the opening for the Science Fiction panel at DesignCon 2010.  Among the panelists was science fiction author and JPL chief engineer Gentry Lee. I sat down with Gentry after the panel and had a really nice interview, from which I will be posting some of the more interesting tid bits.

The first one is Lee’s “inescapable conclusion” that the ultimate goal of technology is immortality.  There was a lively discussion of this, and I think I’m one of the few who don’t entirely agree with his postulation. From a sci fi writer’s perspective, I can see it…it’s a great story.  From a practical standpoint, I think there are a lot of holes in the argument.

First, the technology to keep your body operating indefinitely would certainly be astoundingly expensive.  I really doubt that most employer-paid healthcare plans would cover the ongoing procedures…after all, isn’t death a pre-existing condition?

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Beyond that, I just think it would be boring to be immortal, at least on this earth.  How many people are in boring or dead end jobs?  Do you really want to sort mail for eternity? I have a pretty interesting  job, but I sure don’t want to do this for more than another 50 or 60 years tops!  And what about retirement?  What would the minimum age for social security be…1000? And who could affort to retire with a 401(k)?  You’d need one of those annuity plans that only government workers seem to get.

And there would be the bottom line.  We’d have a country populated by 1000 year-old workers and lots of government retirees.  That’d make anyone want to end it!

What do you think?

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