Hi members!
You may have noticed a gap in your membership emails last week. That’s because we’re trying something new: not emailing you so much. Instead of a daily email, look for one note on Monday and another recapping the week on Friday. We want to practice good email hygiene and are sensitive to overcrowding your inbox.
After tackling the future of the corporate board last week, we’re moving on to the trivial little matter of immortality. Quartz staffer Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz has been investigating the worlds of people who are looking to cheat aging and death, and has put together a fascinating field guide illustrating all the ways scientists, tech billionaires, and some pretty left-of-center thinkers are looking to extend our lifespans beyond the infinite.
The center for much of the exploration of immortality has been in and around Silicon Valley. This should come as no surprise, of course, as Sangeeta writes in her state of play memo:
That Silicon Valley’s titans believe innovation can help them crack death and aging makes intuitive sense. They’ve spent their entire careers quite literally banking on the idea that science and technology can solve the world’s problems. In much the same way, they’re now both investing in, and profiting from, the idea that it’s possible to outsmart death. Buoyed by the valley’s utopian impulses, the defeat of death is an extreme expression of the exceptionalism that shows up throughout the tech sphere: The tech elite don’t have to do their own laundry or shop for groceries, because there are apps for that; they don’t have to submit to regulation or feel guilty about making outlandish amounts of money that facilitate housing inequality in the Bay Area, because their inventions are supposedly changing the world. Now they’re hoping that they, specifically, don’t have to die—a belief that could wind up having serious consequences for everyone else.
Over the course of this week, we’ll be looking at many dimensions of immortality, including:
- a step-by-step guide to freezing yourself for future reanimation,
- a Q&A with philosopher and Cambridge professor Stephen Cave,
- five things Silicon Valley can learn from philosophy,
- a timeline of humanity’s efforts to avoid death,
- an essay about what lobsters and jellyfish can teach us about immortality, and
- a toolkit to learn even more about living forever.
We’ll also be holding a members-only conference call on Friday, March 29 at 11 am ET/4 pm GMT. Stay tuned for details.
We want to hear from you! Please send comments, questions, and green bananas to members@qz.com.
Here’s to a rewarding day,
Sam Grobart
membership editor