We have already examined the progress that has been made by science to stop aging, and the consequence aging has on longevity. The third method science and technology can employ and intends to employ is to completely do away with human biological form and replace it with “artificial” materials. Before this can be achieved however, there are a number of current breakthroughs that can be adopted, step by step, on a single human subject at a time, to prolong or immortalized his/her life. This is technically a method that bridges method one and three.

2. Step by step replacement of human biological parts with artificial parts

As will be seen in method three, the ultimate desire Raymond Kurzweil has is to actualize a state where the so called “Artificial Intelligent” beings aren’t actually artificial but are the real human beings. This is a concept that can be confusing but a simplified explanation is awaiting you in page three of this article. In the meantime, I think a lot of progress has been made that can enable just that, and these include developments in 3D printing, prosthetics, and brain implant technologies.

This is how I see the second method as delivering technological immortality: progressively replacing body parts by prosthetics. For starters, by today, body parts such as the skin, the heart, legs, ears, nose, pancreas, eyes and others can be replaced by artificially synthesized prosthetics. These artificial parts are mainly made of synthetic materials that can mimic the function of the target body part, or even provide better functions. For example scientists at “Weill Cornell Medical College have developed artificial retinas whose chips convert images into electronic signals and whose tiny projectors convert electronic signals into light.These artificial eyes have indeed restored sight to blind mice.”

Also, as we reported in February last year, a European research team provided “Denis Aabo Sørensen, a middle aged man who lost his arm, with robotic arm for one month. The robotic arm was fitted with sensory connectors that connect directly to arm’s nerve endings and able to send sensations of touch back through his arm and into his brain.” Basically, the robotic arm enabled Denis to feel the size and texture of objects once again.

In summary scientists could chose to replace your “dying” body parts with “non-dying” artificial ones, but gradually. Such body parts would include artificial blood meant to replenish the “dying or infected natural one” that, as Telegraph reported in April last year, will be manufactured in factories soon after trials in some patients are completed. Ones all your body parts – limps, eyes, ears, heart, liver – all, have been replaced by artificial ones, your next worry will be replacing your brain – replacing you.

On the future of brain implants, Wall Street Journal opens its article by asking, “How soon can we expect to see brain implants for perfect memory, enhanced vision, hypernormal focus or an expert golf swing?” Although WSJ doesn’t give a time line, it states that scientists “are developing a wireless brain interface that they call “neural dust.” Thousands of biologically neutral microsensors, on the order of one-tenth of a millimeter (approximately the thickness of a human hair), would convert electrical signals into ultrasound that could be read outside the brain.”

The WSJ article continues, “The real question isn’t so much whether something like this can be done but how and when. How many advances in material science, battery chemistry, molecular biology, tissue engineering and neuroscience will we need? Will those advances take one decade, two decades, three or more?”

A chip-made brain implant that copy the content of your brain without distorting who you are is what you’ll need on top of that artificial body in order to preserve your identity. The artificial you will thus be able to potentially live forever. The question here as asked by a PoPSci article that we’ll examine in more detail in method three is this, “If you can interface a brain with a hand, and then a brain with an entire arm, why not a brain with two arms? With two legs? With everything else? The question now is figuring out where the limitations lay–just how far down that road we can go.”

In the last page we cover the big step, transferring the content of your brain to an artificial robot or computer.