According to futurist Sonia Arrison, the big technological revolution today isn’t the Internet. It’s a personalized healthcare revolution that will radically change not only our life expectancy, but the very nature of existence itself. According to Arrison, whose latest book 100 Plus argues that our average lifespan will double in the 21st century, we are on the brink of being able to engineer our own bodies over the network.
The opportunities for entrepreneurs from this revolution, Sonia Arrison told me when she came into our San Francisco TechCrunchTV studio last week, are immense. From education to medical engineering start-ups to the 3-D printing of organs, this, she says, is the new promised land for technology entrepreneurs. I think Arrison is right. So it’s probably time to forget that new social network and focus on a start-up that guarantees the privacy of genomic data or enables the 3-D printing of blood vessels.
The dangers of this world are immense too, of course. From privacy and overpopulation to the dreadful boredom of living forever, Arrison’s healthcare revolution could represent a nightmare for us all. It’s Huxley’s Brave New World all over again, of course. Only this time, it might not be fictional.
Sonia Arrison is a futurist and policy analyst who has studied the impact of new technologies on society for more than a decade. A Senior Fellow at the California-based Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and a columnist for TechNewsWorld, she is author of two previous books as well as numerous PRI studies on technology issues. A frequent media contributor and guest, her work has appeared in many publications including CBS MarketWatch, CNN, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street...
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