“I wish I could go back to the beginning of the season and put some money on the Cubbies.”
Last Wednesday, October 21, 2015, was the day Marty McFly and Doc Brown landed in the future in the second of the Back to the Future (BTTF) movies. Among the many predictions made in the film, the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series this year is not one that will come true.
On that day, coincidentally, the New York Mets eliminated the Cubs from the playoffs.
Another failure of the prognostication in BTTF II, was that Major League Baseball would add a wild card game and division series to the playoff structure meaning by the time Marty showed up in the future Hill Valley, California, the World Series would not yet have even started (it started yesterday).
A lot of the technology in the BTTF envisioned now, does exist. We routinely use video chat, for example, although usually on much smaller screens than the video wall 2015 Marty uses.
There is also tech that exists, but is not in use. For example, there were a couple of scenes in which people used their thumbprints for payment. Biometric identification is in widespread use for security purposes and Apple Pay uses it as payment verification, but we have not embraced it yet as a replacement for bank cards. That is more a social matter than a technology issue, the tech is ready, people are not. The chips in our Interac cards allow us to tap to pay, however, which is pretty close.
One thing the film does not get into is the advancements in medical treatment.
The most exciting thing in medicine right now is anti-aging research. If ever there is going to be a panacea, this will be it.
Advances in genetics and the exponential increase in computing power has begun to unlock the secrets of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that cause our hair to go gray, bones to get brittle, eyesight and hearing to deteriorated and allow all sorts of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s to take hold.
Some extreme optimists believe the first person who will live to be 1,000 years old is already alive and could be as old as in her 50s or 60s. More realistically, studies in rodents, particularly mice, indicate we might not be that far from humans having a typical lifespan of 140 years.
Marty McFly would be 47 years old, today and would likely see the year 2050 given average western lifespan.
Michael J. Fox, the actor who played Marty is currently 54 years old. Although he suffers from Parkinson’s, with advancements in the treatment of the disease, he can also reasonably expect to see the middle of this century.
The symptoms of Parkinson’s occur because cells that produce dopamine start to die. Dopamine helps us move normally. If scientists are correct, that aging can be slowed down, even reversed, and that these breakthroughs are imminent, those of us now in our 50s, might even be able to see 2115. How cool would it be to listen to Rush’s album 2112 in 2112?
Of course, this brings up all kinds of ethical questions. Like biometric payment, humanity is simply not socially ready for 140-year lifespans.
The biological or evolutionary imperative of all species is reproduction. We are hardwired to want babies. Once a generation fulfills that imperative, it usually dies off. Medical science has already extended the human lifespan by approximately three decades just in the last century. What happens if we double it in the next century through a combination of genetics and cybernetics?
We already have a serious population problem brewing on this planet. Right now, most of us are done with reproducing by our 40s, but what if we could expect to be healthy for another 100 years at that point? What about making room in the workforce for incoming generations?
It’s an interesting conundrum. According to some bioethicists, scientists simply can’t stop trying because of a moral duty to save lives.
“When you save a life, you are simply postponing death to another point,” John Harris of University of Manchester (England) told the website LiveScience. “Thus, we are committed to extending life indefinitely if we can, for the same reasons that we are committed to life-saving.”
A lot of people say they wouldn’t want to live to be more than 80 or 100, but I suspect they would feel differently if they knew they could be vigorous and youthful at 120. Imagine knowing your great-great-great grandchildren.
I would take that pill or become part cyborg in a heartbeat.
