New Scientist is currently running a special where top scientists and thinkers offer their predictions for the next fifty years. Things like this are always an intellectual crapshoot, but there seems to be general agreement that continued research in genetics is about to yield some major breakthroughs. And I wonder how any of this would affect me and people like me. I’ve always assumed that in the years ahead, i might lose a little more functioning or it might simply plateau (as it seems to have for the past several years). If I live long enough, perhaps genetic therapies might offer me some small degree of increased functioning. Perhaps nanomachines could help me breathe without the assistance of a bulky ventilator. An extremely slight possibility, but one worth considering.
Whatever the future brings, I hope I’m around for a while to watch things play out.
