The tales of humanity's search for immortality date back thousands of years. There is something about the ability to outlive time itself that has always enticed certain sections of the human populace to set off on unimaginable quests.

Yet, the dream of immortality remains just that. A dream. As far as we know, no one has stumbled upon or created a magical elixir that grants a person true immortality and it seems unlikely that, that will ever happen.

But that doesn't mean humanity's quest is over. With our technological innovations, we have continuously made seemingly impossible things, possible. Things that would only be considered magical by someone from merely a century ago.

Could one day an innovation like that or a bunch of innovations coming together, make immortality a reality? Given the exponential rate of progress in technology, can it be done within this century?

Immortality - A Future Commodity?

If someone had suggested in the 19th century that two hundred years later, anybody in the world would be able to talk to and even see anybody else in the world in real time, they would have been dismissed with a wave of a hand and probably mocked for stating such a nonsensical idea.

Fast forward to today and that's exactly the reality we are living in. So, what if someone says today that within this century we will be able to completely master the different biological aspects of our human bodies leading us to become immortals, in one way or the other? It might sound impossible, but it's quite the opposite.

Contrary to the popular belief, there can be many ways one could become immortal. The most common being in one's own body. That could be achieved with the help of various advancements in biotechnology including genetic manipulation and nanotechnology. We could eliminate all our weaknesses and at the same time enhance our strengths by an order of magnitude.

Swarms of nano-bots inside our bodies could keep everything well oiled, fighting off any diseases and repairing any cell that needs it, so that there is no overall degradation of any biological process over time. Also, artificial organs and parts that would bear an uncanny resemblance to the real ones, would be freely available such that our bodies could increasingly become 'modular'.

Also consider another road to immortality. When we finally understand consciousness completely and learn to upload it to a cloud or a computer, that would be the holy grail of immortality. That's because, from there on, we will be able to use 'physical bodies' like we use clothes and could interchange them over time as per our whim, enabling the real us, our consciousness, to live on forever.

Now, all of this sounds way too distant to care about, but consider the exponential pace of technological innovation and it could happen by the end of the 21st century. The real questions is, if that happens, and you have a chance at immortality, would you take it?