2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

On Feb. 15, 1965, a diffident but self-possessed high school student named Raymond Kurzweil appeared as a guest on a game show called I've Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and the panelists — they included a comedian and a former Miss America — had to guess what it was.

On the show (see the clip on YouTube), the beauty queen did a good job of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200.

Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself — a desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a typewriter. The panelists were pretty blasé about it; they were more impressed by Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. They were ready to move on to Mrs. Chester Loney of Rough and Ready, Calif., whose secret was that she'd been President Lyndon Johnson's first-grade teacher.

But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence.

That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it. Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that happens, humanity — our bodies, our minds, our civilization — will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this moment is not only inevitable but imminent. According to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.

Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing.

True? True.

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.

If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.

Probably. It's impossible to predict the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with which (with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you'd be as smart as they would be. But there are a lot of theories about it. Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we'll scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.

The difficult thing to keep sight of when you're talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about the future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.

NYU super-student invents instant blood-clotting gel

By Victoria Wellman

PUBLISHED: 09:07 EST, 18 March 2013 | UPDATED: 11:12 EST, 18 March 2013

Genius: NYU student, Joe Landolina, 20, has invented a revolutionary blood-clotting gel that could save soldiers in the field

NYU boasts many budding geniuses among its students but one has already proven he is an Einstein in the making by inventing a gel that stops bleeding instantly and heals wounds without the need for a single bandage.

Joe Landolina, a bachelor's student of bio-molecular chemical engineering who is also studying for a masters in biomedical engineering, used his scientific savvy to recreate naturally occurring polymers in the body that clot blood on contact.

Initially intended for veterinarian practices, Mr Landolina told MailOnline that he hopes Veti-Gel will soon be used by the armed forces in the field to treat major trauma victims and stops wounds bleeding out until they can get to hospital. 

Still only a junior at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU,  the brainy student developed the science in 2010 and along with fellow student Isaac Miller, formed a company around the product, then called Medi-Gel, in 2012 as a bid to enter a business competition.

He explained of the change in name: 'Medi-Gel was a working name and we still use it internally but the first market we're trying to break into is the veterinary market, hence the name Veti-Gel.

'For humans there are similar products available, very expensive but similar, but for animals, there is nothing that coagulates blood quickly enough.

'I have spoken to hundreds of vets and heard how in situations where for example, a spleen is bleeding, they would rather take the spleen out than risk waiting for any of the current products to work quickly enough. So Veti-Gel would be very well received in this industry.'

Having performed clinical trials on lab rats, Mr Landolina says he is constantly amazed by how effective the gel is.

Scroll down for video

New-age bandage: Veti-Gel uses a plant-based haemophilic polymer that grabs onto the blood and forces it to coagulate while another polymer then replicates the skin tricking the body into thinking it is skin

To show the public he conducted an experiment on a piece of pork loin injected with real pig's blood.

'I went to my neighborhood butcher in Brooklyn and said I needed the freshest meat you have, and it was pork loin,' he told the New York Post. Sure enough, once an incision was made and blood oozed from the cut, it stopped as if by magic once the gel was applied.

A two-part process, Veti-Gel uses a plant-based hemophilic polymer that grabs onto the blood and 'snaps it back together to seal the wound'.  Another polymer then replicates the skin tricking the body into thinking it is skin.

Gamma-sterilized, it has antimicrobial properties and used by surgeons in sterile environments is a safe, disinfecting way to heal a wound.

In dusty, dirty war zones, however, Veti-Gel will most likely be used as a temporary fix to help soldiers until they receive proper medical help. 'Doctors would then remove it and treat the wound,' explained Mr Landolina.

Such technology, he claims, could potentially replace 80 percent of the wound-care market such as band-aids, antiseptic gels and bandages, and he and his four-man team are working towards getting approval from the FDA.

Meanwhile, the ambitious student has to manage his time between business and academia.  'It's a balancing act. I've gotten better at it over the last few years. This spring break, I'm working from Florida, that's enough spring break for me!'

WATCH video of a pork loin blood clotting here

Has a grad student invented the instant wound cure?

If this is true — and I have to admit more than a little skepticism about this, given the just-so story near the end — it could be the single biggest medical breakthrough in decades. You know how in Mass Effect, characters can take life-threatening damage and after one little button-press, they’re right back in the fight? Bullet wounds, rockets, whatever — just slap on your medi-gel dispenser button and your armor seals up the wound and lets you keep fighting.

A grad student has supposedly taken that Mass Effect equivalent of a magic healing potion, Medi-Gel, and turned it into a reality.

It is a synthetic version of the extracellular matrix (ECM) that holds our cells together and tells them what to do in the event of a bleeding injury, instructing them to get clotting. It also binds together with the damaged ECM cells of the patient, working with them to form a seal over the area of the wound.

The minds behind Veti-Gel (which is, oddly, sometimes referred to as Medi-Gel by the people who made it) are led by one Joe Landolina, a third-year student at NYU. “I have seen [Veti-Gel] close any size of wound that it is applied to,” he said. “As long as you can cover it, it can close it…it looks like, feels like, and acts like skin.”

Landolina has spent the past year conducting preliminary tests of the substance on rats, and claims to have used it to heal wounds several of humanity’s rodent friends. He will publish a full record of his results, and tests comparing Veti-Gel to other on-market coagulants, later this summer. In the meantime, he says he’s keen to get to work testing his invention out in the field with veterinarians and their patients.

Of course, this is just preliminary work, which doubles my skepticism of the story he tells of his friend burning himself on a campfire, applying the gel, and being fully cured the next day. That sounds, frankly, like bullshit, so I really hope there’s some truth to this because it could be a serious game-changer for first responders and paramedics. Hell, half your medical kit will be obviated by this miracle cure.

What do you folks think of the likelihood of this being real?

Update: Said grad student already has a website up. And a company name. This is a bit too fast for such an earth-shattering technology to make the market, and with such claims:

VETI-GEL™ is the ideal solution for immediate hemostasis in difficult situations, such as liver bleeds. Never again risk precious seconds waiting to control dangerous bleeding.