Longevity Escape Velocity

Death and Taxes the twin inevitabilities of human life. At least, for the moment. If you ask some of the most prominent futurists in the world, death may not be on that (admittedly short and cliché) list for much longer.

- J.A.

There's a controversial idea floating around of "longevity escape velocity." It's basically the idea that as our life-extension tech gets better, our life expectancy could increase by more than we age over a period of time. For example, as medical innovations move forward, we would still age a year over the span of a year. But our life expectancy would go up by, say, a year and two months, meaning we would functionally get two months of life back.

In March of this year, Ray Kurzweil-former Google engineer and prominent AI-centric futurist-told multiple outlets that he believed humanity would achieve longevity escape velocity as early as 2029. That may seem like a remarkably near future, but Kurzweil seems convinced, largely because medical advancement seems to be speeding up.