These technologies will make us more death resistant, but not immortal. For example, an enhanced individual with the bad luck to be standing next to a nuclear warhead when it went off would still very quickly come face to face with his/her own mortality.

One interesting question that this poses is how such a society would view death. In my mind, rather than eliminating death from one’s consciousness, it would only make death, however less frequent, seem even more terrifying and painful.

Another question, related to the first, would be how the human psych would interact with our new, enhanced state. For example, losing a best friend of 20 years in a tragic accident is bad enough, what would be the impact of losing a best friend of 200 years. Is that something that a human could psychologically handle?

I think we would be wiser to examine the quality more than the quantity of our lives.

One very real downside to being human seems to be the more we are given, the less we appreciate. Ask any child. The one with one or two toys is generally much happier than the one with one or two hundred. Why? Because we never seem to appreciate what we have, only what we want. Truly too bad for all of us, for such want is torturously insatiable. Can anyone say ‘Ponzi Scheme’?

Immortality would certainly be no different, only FOREVER.

Another interesting human foible to note here is our all too frequent inability to differentiate ourselves from the technology we operate, whether that be an I-Pod, cell phone, PDA or, my personal favorite, the automobile.

Who has not driven down the road convinced that the person riding in the driver’s seat of the neighboring car was in fact not ‘driving’ that car, they WERE that car. Pieces of hard metal, glass, plastic, rubber, hair, skin, teeth; all barreling down the road without a thought or care save the pursuit of high speed and zero impediments.

A comforting thought should someday we all be stomping around Darth Vader-like, more hard calculating machine than empathetic man or woman.

Such a day would make the typical LA freeway rush hour look like a leisurely stroll in the park.

Should such greenery continue to find relevance twenty years hence.