Noted futurist, Ray Kurzweil has said that human immortality is probably less than 20 years away. Actually, I didn't hear him say this or even read his exact words. But I read the newspaper headline and that's more than most people do.
I strongly suspect that Kurzweil is predicting the marriage of biomedicine and computer technology so that it will be possible to revive failed anatomical systems (e.g. respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive) and/or replace human organs beyond those that are currently possible (e.g. heart, kidney, lungs). And that therefore it is possible to keep an individual alive indefinitely. Or at least this is what immortality will look like in the beginning.
Some might argue that (if my assumptions are correct) replacing so many parts means that the resulting individual can hardly be considered the same person. I suppose the argument might be made that if I have a 40 year old car and over its life I have replaced the engine, front and rear axles, suspension, interior and enough other components that it really is a misnomer to say I have the same car today that I had all these years.
But no matter, I think that we humans will one day soon have components implanted in our bodies that are intelligent and that are custom designed to respond to circumstances enough so that instead of wearing out over the years, they improve with time. We already have artificial joints and organs so this is not that far off. The big difference is that we will now move into supplementing or replacing our thinking and memory functions in addition to our motor skills, circulation or respiration.This may one day make humans and machines virtually indistinguishable. Or at least humans and synthetic organisms and/or biological parts.
Furthermore on boundary blurring . . .
It seems that boundaries are disappearing everywhere. There is a border between the U.S. and Canada, but aside from a different form of currency, you wouldn't know you're in another country were you to walk across it. I would say the same thing about the boundary between Texas and Mexico; there is very little noticeable difference on either side.
In media, the boundary between the program and the advertisement has been eroding for years. Product placement has been growing in Hollywood film and television programming so that it is not clearly defined which part of the broadcast is paid for by the sponsor and which is part of the creative work.
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Mental Health's Second-Hand Smoke Equivalent
In the 1980s, a singer named Joe Jackson released a song called "Cancer." The line repeated throughout the song was "everything gives you cancer." It was a parody on the seemingly endless list of everyday products and practices that in laboratories has resulted in carcinoma cell development among mice. I'm exaggerating but only because the song itself was an exaggeration.
However, I do believe that sometime in the near future we are going to hear from scientists who find that the electronic audio and video that are so pervasive in our lives and that form a background of sounds to an increasing portion of our days is the mental health equivalent of second-hand smoke. In other words, published findings will demonstrate that passive listening to this noise leads to one of several neuroses like anxiety, insomnia or some more serious threat to mental health.
Popular media undoubtedly aim to cultivate a sense of dissatisfaction among viewers and listeners and are interspersed with advertisements purporting to fulfill those unmet desires. So the question for laboratory or field research will be what are is the net outcome of this dissatisfaction among the populace. Tranquility and acceptance? Unlikely. I can't help but think of teen suicide and cyber-bullying as the result of this sense of dissatisfaction which advertisers want to inject into a younger and younger audience.
In fact, it is so widely published in popular news accounts that watching television before bedtime does contribute to sleeplessness that I have no doubt the harm of electronic media will become common knowledge soon. We hear from a national pediatrics group that children under 2 should not be exposed to television as it might interfere with cognitive development.
I can only wonder whether lawsuits will ensue, asserting that television producers and advertisers knew the dangers but still pushed the medium in an attempt to downplay the effects or even spin them into some positive outcomes.
However, I do believe that sometime in the near future we are going to hear from scientists who find that the electronic audio and video that are so pervasive in our lives and that form a background of sounds to an increasing portion of our days is the mental health equivalent of second-hand smoke. In other words, published findings will demonstrate that passive listening to this noise leads to one of several neuroses like anxiety, insomnia or some more serious threat to mental health.
Popular media undoubtedly aim to cultivate a sense of dissatisfaction among viewers and listeners and are interspersed with advertisements purporting to fulfill those unmet desires. So the question for laboratory or field research will be what are is the net outcome of this dissatisfaction among the populace. Tranquility and acceptance? Unlikely. I can't help but think of teen suicide and cyber-bullying as the result of this sense of dissatisfaction which advertisers want to inject into a younger and younger audience.
In fact, it is so widely published in popular news accounts that watching television before bedtime does contribute to sleeplessness that I have no doubt the harm of electronic media will become common knowledge soon. We hear from a national pediatrics group that children under 2 should not be exposed to television as it might interfere with cognitive development.
I can only wonder whether lawsuits will ensue, asserting that television producers and advertisers knew the dangers but still pushed the medium in an attempt to downplay the effects or even spin them into some positive outcomes.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Insurance at Risk
The information access revolution taking place over the past 10-15 years has had a number of unintended consequences. Certain professions have been marginalized as with many technological innovations. The rise of do-it-yourself and sharing among amateurs have allowed us to undertake things with more confidence and without the need to consult an expert in many cases. Personal privacy has been put in doubt and the concept of privacy will have to be re-evaluated. Another unforseen change is an undermining of the notion of "pooled risk," a principle that modern insurance is based on.
Insurance companies offer to pay for personal loss of a subscriber only if the pool of buyers is large enough to sufficiently cover the costs of a catastrophe and if the estimated frequency of such a catastrophe is low enough to ensure that claims do not exhaust the accumulated subscriber payments.
But today we know (and can know) a lot about people including an increasingly accurate estimate of their chances for encountering misfortune. With medical records, increasingly sophisticated actuarial tables, public health data, genomics and other information sources that can more accurately predict the likelihood of certain occurrences, insurance companies will become more discriminating in the policies they write and their premiums will more accurately reflect the chances that a subscriber will one day make a claim. Insurance policies will soon be based on data sources that were unavailable just a few years ago.
Computer models which estimate rates of crime, traffic, health problems and which also assess the monetary level of potential damages from these are getting better all the time. I suspect that soon they will be so good as to almost render the notion of pooled risk inconsequential. The uncertainty accompanying risk will be reduced so much that the marketplace for insurance will become nearly unsustainable.
For example, most of us know today that the vast majority of lifetime expenditures on health care take place within the last year of a person's life. The hospitalization, home care, therapies and drugs that characterize the chronically ill octogenarian's last year dwarfs expenditures made throughout his or her life. Of course, there is the possibility of catastrophic illness throughout our lives (such as cancer or permanent disability from accidents) but if we could eliminate those freak occurrences, we would all delay health insurance purchases until we were at retirement age since we probably won't need much in the way of benefits until the last years of our lives. (Health insurance is an odd case and I only use this example to illustrate the way that emerging information resources could guide decisions on insurance purchasing.) In fact, government regulation is the only thing keeping the health insurance market afloat as many insurers would eagerly cancel policies for those who develop a predisposition to illness. Such as the elderly.
Taken together with the burdensome economic situation that many insurance companies are facing, it may be that we can say goodbye to insurance as we have known it for many years. After all, if we can know so much about a person's chances for encountering misfortune, then the risk is removed for both parties. Only those who learn that their chances of having an accident or illness are high will purchase a comprehensive policy but insurance companies will only issue policies with large coverage to those whose chances of an accident or illness are very low.
This assumes that information flows freely; it is likely that corporations (insurance companies and their finance parent companies) will have an advantage in the collection and processing of this information.
But that's a topic for another post.
Insurance companies offer to pay for personal loss of a subscriber only if the pool of buyers is large enough to sufficiently cover the costs of a catastrophe and if the estimated frequency of such a catastrophe is low enough to ensure that claims do not exhaust the accumulated subscriber payments.
But today we know (and can know) a lot about people including an increasingly accurate estimate of their chances for encountering misfortune. With medical records, increasingly sophisticated actuarial tables, public health data, genomics and other information sources that can more accurately predict the likelihood of certain occurrences, insurance companies will become more discriminating in the policies they write and their premiums will more accurately reflect the chances that a subscriber will one day make a claim. Insurance policies will soon be based on data sources that were unavailable just a few years ago.
Computer models which estimate rates of crime, traffic, health problems and which also assess the monetary level of potential damages from these are getting better all the time. I suspect that soon they will be so good as to almost render the notion of pooled risk inconsequential. The uncertainty accompanying risk will be reduced so much that the marketplace for insurance will become nearly unsustainable.
For example, most of us know today that the vast majority of lifetime expenditures on health care take place within the last year of a person's life. The hospitalization, home care, therapies and drugs that characterize the chronically ill octogenarian's last year dwarfs expenditures made throughout his or her life. Of course, there is the possibility of catastrophic illness throughout our lives (such as cancer or permanent disability from accidents) but if we could eliminate those freak occurrences, we would all delay health insurance purchases until we were at retirement age since we probably won't need much in the way of benefits until the last years of our lives. (Health insurance is an odd case and I only use this example to illustrate the way that emerging information resources could guide decisions on insurance purchasing.) In fact, government regulation is the only thing keeping the health insurance market afloat as many insurers would eagerly cancel policies for those who develop a predisposition to illness. Such as the elderly.
Taken together with the burdensome economic situation that many insurance companies are facing, it may be that we can say goodbye to insurance as we have known it for many years. After all, if we can know so much about a person's chances for encountering misfortune, then the risk is removed for both parties. Only those who learn that their chances of having an accident or illness are high will purchase a comprehensive policy but insurance companies will only issue policies with large coverage to those whose chances of an accident or illness are very low.
This assumes that information flows freely; it is likely that corporations (insurance companies and their finance parent companies) will have an advantage in the collection and processing of this information.
But that's a topic for another post.
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