At the touch of a button

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

IN the movie, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, the main character, Benjamin Button, is born as an elderly man, ages in reverse and dies an infant. He lives through this “aging” process, with the hope that during the course of his life, he will meet Daisy at the “right” time, having met her as a child, twelve years after his birth (as an old man), and who appears in and out of his life as she grows in the normal way, like everyone else around him.

There is no basis for aging in reverse, but I am sure that at some point, most people want to reverse or freeze the aging process at the most desired point in their lives. The quest for the fountain of life had been unceasing, and there were times scientific breakthroughs had given us hope, but these were accessible only at great cost.

One of the more recent technologies in regenerative medicine is the stem cell transplant. According to its promoters, stem cell therapy “promotes the repair response of diseased, dysfunctional or injured tissue using stem cells or their derivatives”. The medical community however, declared that there is a need for a more extensive scientific research and continuing clinical study to establish the health and therapeutic claims of stem cell therapy, and to mitigate its side effects.

Given the quantum leap of knowledge, it is just a matter of time when these innovations become available to us at affordable costs. This is the prediction of physicist Michio Kaku, who believes that the technology of the future will change our lives drastically, with all information literally available “at the touch of a button”, or “at the touch of a finger”, or at the touch of anything. His prediction is shared by Yuval Noah Harari, author of the book, “Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow”, where he predicts that humans can do what used to be impossible, and reduce them into manageable challenges. Indeed, humans can live longer, age much slower, and live a better quality of life in the future.

Or will we? Or do we, as a result of innovations we ourselves invented, become the useless class that Harari predicted, as well?

Touch

the walls of tomorrow
will know, in an instant 
if my heart is well

or sick, and heal it,
at the touch of a button
at the touch of a finger
at the touch of anything

if anything, I will know
always, and tomorrow
what the walls will never know
when your heart beats
and your cheeks blush, I know
you were shot by an arrow

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