This was really like four news segments in one program. The question "Can we live forever?" gets broken down: can we just replace failing parts? can we make avatars of ourselves? can we hibernate and slow down or reverse the dying process? The work tries to be very user-friendly by having computer graphics, cartoons, and movie references.
The work begins by speaking of a car owner that replaces parts on his car, cares for it, and it's now been usable for 4 decades. I thought the analogy took too long. Many James Cameron fans may love when this speaks about avatars. A scholar is working on saving one's facial expressions, thoughts, and motions. To me that wasn't living forever! It seemed no different than being able to read a late ancestor's diary. You are not going to get endless info on a dead person via this method. Also, what if the computer holding your avatar breaks? What if a virus erases it? My great-grandmother was a sweet person, but a computer recording of her for me to watch endlessly is not her being alive forever.
I appreciate how the work ended. DeGrasse says we're already at 7 billion humans and at this rate there may be a time when there are more humans on Earth than land on the planet. He then opens the door to interplanetary travel. I would say we humans are going to have to choose between reproducing as much or living forever. A professor once said you can't have both comparative worth and affirmative action as equality-inducing measures. We humans might not be able to have our cake and eat it too.
Since everyone knows how PC I am, don't be surprised about the following comment. The work had diverse speakers. It had a Black guy, an Asian woman, an Asian guy, and several others. When they speak of genes that prolong life, they kinda imply that some ethnicities have them or access them easily and others don't. Thus, they skirt over whether only certain groups have this longevity as an option. The discussion that would ensue about WHO gets to live forever and how that would alter demographics gets ignored.
The skeptic in me arises from this work as well. The work doesn't talk about cost. Will only the rich be able to afford this technology? The work says nothing on cloning, btw. This made me think about another PBS documentary on the very elderly. That work said folks' bodies are living longer, but their brains are ravaged by Alzheimer's, inter alia. This "live forever" doc never touches on our bodies being alive, but our psyches not being able to enjoy that life.
