Death. The disease that claims countless numbers of lives in any way possible. But what if there was a way to obtain permanent cure from this disease? To be immortal and never fear death again? This power that could give people the chance to achieve greatness? Ray Kurzweil believes that immortality is a possible occurrence in the near future. He has devoted his entire life to studying how to never age and die, and he hopes to never leave this planet.

The article titled The Race for Immortality, written by Will Oremus, describes the studies done by Kurzweil and his belief in immortality. When asked how long he believes he will live, Kurzweil responded, “I think I have a good chance—I would put it at 80 percent—of getting to the point where it becomes indefinite, because you’ll be adding more time than is going by to your remaining life expectancy.” Kurzweil is involved in a project to find a cure for aging as well as ‘Google Brain.’ He believes that “smartphones are becoming extensions of our minds” and that eventually we will “be implanting computers and nanobots in our bodies and brains to enhance their natural functions…and that someday we will be able to back up our minds to the cloud.” Kurzweil also stated that progress has already been made toward his goal, as is evident in the great advancement in technology of the 21st century.

It’s true. Technology has made a huge advancement, from nano-bots that can be used in major surgeries, to computer controlled drones. This is evident in an observation known as Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors on circuits doubles about every two years. Kurzweil predicted that within 10 years from 1999 most text would be created using some form of speech recognition, and he has a piece of evidence to support his prediction: Siri. If technology continues to advance this rapidly, it’s a possibility that Kurzweil’s dream could come true.

Immortality would be an interesting advantage to those people who would benefit from it. Each person on this earth has their own time to live and to make the most of it. If someone could live indefinitely, they wouldn’t have any worries in life and would be more apt to doing something out of ordinary, such as jumping off a 4 story building. The point here is that if people were given the opportunity to achieve greatness because they themselves are unlimited, wouldn’t they do it?