Confusing Discussion.

So, in my history class we had a really strange discussion today.
There were 2 parts to it, I'm going to try to explain the first part and then in another part the second part. But they are both related.



So my teacher, Mr. Glover (REALLY COOL TEACHER), was talking about how soon in medicine they will be able to inject little microscopic computers into our bodies. The doctors get on a different normal computer, which the microscopic computers send signals to. They type in any disease or issue that the person may be having. The little micro computers go in and find the infected cells and destroy them and any trace of the illness. The microscopic computers are also able to find the diseases on their own, and destroy all diseases it may find.

THE PROBLEM WITH THIS is that nobody would die. If every time you have even a minor issue they cure it, we would not die. People have to die, it's just how it is. People are not just going to stop having sex and having kids, so we will be way over populated.... which means we have a huge problem.

Alright, The second part is the more confusing part.

So my teacher said that there will be a computer, most likely within the next 15 years, that will have the same capacity as a human mind. Scientists believe that they will be able to insert microscopic things into your body. These particular computer-like things will be able to access your mind completely. They will send all of your thoughts (concious, dreams, inner-most desirs.... so on) to a computer. You would be pretty much living in the computer, as well as yourself.

The confusing part.... What happens when you die? I believe people die and go to heaven or hell. So how do they live for forever, as it was explained was possible, if you are supposed to go to heaven or hell? And can your body decay, but your mind still is alive somehow?

Also. With the second part of this. If someone can have complete control over your body and mind, which they would have, they could change you. The government could inject you with these microscopic computers that read your mind at birth. So then they know your every thought every moment of every time. And they can kill you, or since they also have access to your mind they could probably some how change what you think, either with the computers described in the medicine way or the mind way. And then they could make a reality such as in the book The Giver, where everyone is the same, doesn't ask questions, and does whatever they are told. If someone has access to your mind they can CHANGE your thoughts. Other books similar would be 1986 and the Uglies series (as well as probably many more I can't think of at the moment.

Basically, if this all became a reality, we would be living forever, because our bodies would be perfect and strong. In a reality where we are all exactly the same.

All this technology is nothing but speculation. Even if computers magically cured every disease, people will still die. Being in a fatal auto accident is not a disease. While you can't die of "old age" per-se, you will always essentially do that - your body parts will continue to wear out and eventually all your organs will fail. Short of organ transplantation, there isn't much you can do to fix that. There will never be a large enough supply of organs such that you can receive all the transplants you need.

All that goes with maximum life span which is a fairly interesting piece of research amongst gerontologists. Maximum lifespan is not to be confused with average lifespan. Maximum lifespan is the theoretical maximum age an individual of a given species can reach. For humans it appears to be somewhere around 120-125 years (the oldest-ever person was 122 years old). While average lifespan has continued to get longer throughout history, the maximum lifespan hasn't changed much, if at all.
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In 1900, the average person (worldwide) was expected to live 30-40 years. Today that number is 66.12 years (again, worldwide - it's higher still in places like Europe, USA, etc.) In the last century, the average lifespan has increased 26-36 years depending on which numbers you use. Back to maximum lifespan....Geert Adriaans Boomgaard died in 1899 at the age of 111. 100 years later the oldest-ever person is 122 - just 11 years older. While life expectancy has nearly doubled the last 100 years, the maximum lifespan has increased by just 11 years (or less than 10%).


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The second part is even more philosophical in nature. For starters, I question your teacher's predictions of technology here. While progress is being made in uploading the contents of the mind into a hard drive of sorts, the notion of exploring one's thoughts in real-time is quite a ways off.

If you are seriously interested in this subject do one (or more) of the following:
A) When you get to college, take courses in gerontology
B) Go to the library, amazon.com, etc. and find gerontology textbooks - don't think you can't do it. Just because you aren't college-age yet doesn't mean you can't comprehend a college textbook. If you want to learn the material you can.
C) Look for scholarly journals that deal with gerontology and read articles - journal articles are the best way to get scientific information. Unfortunately, these articles may be difficult for you to access unless you are at a university library as normal libraries can't access their databases and the journals are very expensive.

UPDATE: I did a bit of research on point C and the "best" gerontological journal is called Journal of Applied Gerontology. For an individual it costs $31 an issue ($169 for a year [5 issues]).

The journal also allows you to read articles from one of their issues for free.....
click here

I'm not sure if this will help you much as gerontology is more focused on the psychological aspects of aging, but it's probably a good start as the hard science-based aspects will be beyond the scope of what you can comprehend.

Honestly that is a really weird topic to talk about in history..but i mean what ever floats ur boat.. and wouldnt that be weird if they could actualuly put microscopic computers into you!

Yah it is a strange topic for history. But we were talking about Queen Antoinette and King Louis (I don't remember the #) and how they would tell people anything and expect them to believe them.... or something along those lines.


But yah it would be weird. It's kinda scary too.

Hitler worked under the idea of tell a big enough lie long enough, and people will believe you.

We talked about that today.... we also talked about how many of the really bad people in history are short. ha. sorry random.

TG wrote:

We talked about that today.... we also talked about how many of the really bad people in history are short. ha. sorry random.

Don't be sorry, it was true.

Yah... We have some interesting conversations in history class.

That's great. I had mostly boring History teachers.

I only have Mr. Glover for this trimester. My other history teacher from last trimester was boring, and I don't have history next trimester.

How is that stupid study skills class? Did you get out of it?

I got out of it. I'm now in intoduction to art. It's kinda a fun class. I drew this really really cool picture today and yesterday. I have to work on it some more tomorrow. It is a river, with mountains in the background, and these pine trees and all kinds of stuff. It is really pretty. But I did it with shading in black and white. It looks pretty cool.

I LOVED art classes. I tried to take some form of art every tri-mester. I love black and white drawing, also oil pastels. I made a horse head out of clay, a full panther in a tree, out of wax, and the weird project was a coffee table made out of a full body cast of a guy in our studio art class! It was a three person project. :haha:

I also did a stained glass window. You have to watch making them.... I did it during track season, and threw discus. I would show up for practice with little cuts from cutting the glass pieces! It did not effect my discus throws, but my coach was not happy!

I am HORRIBLE at art. Except this picture that I'm doing now. I love it, but I can't draw at all.

And I don't think we get to do much cool stuff like that...

I thought trimesters were only for the pregnant?!?!??

haha. Nope.

laprimamirala wrote:

I thought trimesters were only for the pregnant?!?!??

More and more school districts are going to them due to government required classes. The board's of education found that to cover all the required classed, the students did not have room for electives, like art, shop, band, typing, and all the classes that make a student well rounded, scholastically! By going to three terms (trimester), they could fit in electives.

I read in the Garden City Observer (online), at the start of this school year, that Garden City, MI also had to go to trimesters.

Also why they wanted to go to trimesters, You only take your major subjects, history, english, science, and Math (I think those are the main subjects? Might be another one idk), for 2 of the 3 terms. So say you take English 10 Part 1 in your frist trimester and fail it, you can retake part one the second trimester, then take part two your third trimester, and still get all the required credits without having to retake the class the next year.