Hank G (BookWyrm) reviewed Fantastic voyage by Ray Kurzweil
Some good bones but some woo-woo
2 stars
I read this nearly 20 year old book after Peter Attia's recent longevity book as comparison. The premise is that using all of the latest knowledge on how to live healthily longer and the ever increasing life expectancy every year we could eventually live forever. Literally. Kerzweil had fantastical (pun intended) projections for when technologies would be here for life extension. He projected that by the 2020s (today) we were expected to have nanobots replacing blood cells and other bodily functions, a whole parallel bionic digestive system so we could eat whatever we wanted while the nanobots would be building out our real nutrition. Their precursors were going to be drugs that achieve comparably fantastical things a decade or two before.
Beyond their fantastical technology projections they bought into a lot of the craze that still dominates alt-health world with radical exaggerations of the negative effects of artificial sweeteners, coffee, …
I read this nearly 20 year old book after Peter Attia's recent longevity book as comparison. The premise is that using all of the latest knowledge on how to live healthily longer and the ever increasing life expectancy every year we could eventually live forever. Literally. Kerzweil had fantastical (pun intended) projections for when technologies would be here for life extension. He projected that by the 2020s (today) we were expected to have nanobots replacing blood cells and other bodily functions, a whole parallel bionic digestive system so we could eat whatever we wanted while the nanobots would be building out our real nutrition. Their precursors were going to be drugs that achieve comparably fantastical things a decade or two before.
Beyond their fantastical technology projections they bought into a lot of the craze that still dominates alt-health world with radical exaggerations of the negative effects of artificial sweeteners, coffee, EM radiation. While simultaneously they were really big on the exaggerated health claims of alkaline water and radical over-supplementation. The latter leads to suggested regiments that they follow of taking literally 90-250 pills a day. No thank you.
The core that is good is their diet, physical exercise, stress management, sleep, and cognitive exercises. It was pretty run of the mill advice you would get from any major mainstream place. That doesn't sell though hence all of the above stuff which is at best unnecessary to at worst ludicrous or maybe even dangerous if done impromperly.
It was an interesting snapshot in time but the juice really isn't worth the squeeze. You can find the real actionable information anywhere.