Throughout recorded history, man has dreamt of eternal life. Christian theology promises immortality for the spirit, but not the flesh.  Ponce de Leon searched in vain for the Fountain of Youth. Every recorded civilization has its myths of magical elixirs, charms and talismans, mystical islands, and fantastic secret gardens; all said to confer a remedy against age and death — and all, until now, just myths, no more.

Some of you may have noticed this article in the Washington Post over the weekend. Apparently, our Tech Titans have decided they’ve had enough of religion and myths. They want immortality, in this lifetime:

[The tech titans] who founded Google, Facebook, eBay, Napster and Netscape are using their billions to rewrite the nation’s science agenda and transform biomedical research. Their objective is to use the tools of technology — the chips, software programs, algorithms and big data they used in creating an information revolution — to understand and upgrade what they consider to be the most complicated piece of machinery in existence: the human body.

The entrepreneurs are driven by a certitude that rebuilding, regenerating and reprogramming patients’ organs, limbs, cells and DNA will enable people to live longer and better. The work they are funding includes hunting for the secrets of living organisms with insanely long lives, engineering microscopic nanobots that can fix your body from the inside out, figuring out how to reprogram the DNA you were born with, and exploring ways to digitize your brain based on the theory that your mind could live long after your body expires.

I should say from the outset that I doubt any of this will work.

But as a thought experiment: What if I’m wrong?

From time immemorial, human society been organized in the certain knowledge that every creature born must die. But what if we succeed in understanding  the forces that control senescence and death? What we can understand we can control. And what we can control, we will control.

Religion, politics, love, family, desire, ambition, philosophy, justice, art, literature and the meaning we assign to life itself would be destined to change and change forever.

What if they merely succeed in a more modest goal–an increase in the maximum human life span of, say, 50 percent? This would surely be humanity’s greatest scientific achievement; advances such as the invention of the printing press and the discovery of the atom would seem trivial by comparison. The organizing principle of all human understanding, all striving – to every thing, there is a season – would be upended.

What would it cost? Clearly, the technology will be expensive. Would immortality–or a vastly longer life–be available only to a small minority of the population? Clearly, yes. If, as a society, we cannot pay for everyone–and we cannot–how would the immortals be chosen? Who will live and who will receive a death sentence? Would mortals and near-immortals exist alongside one another? What kinds of conflict would this engender?

What would become of the multitude of healthy, vigorous, but chronologically ancient people who have no established role in society?

Extended life spans would have revolutionary economic effects. Retirement, as we know it, would become meaningless. What would become of the idea of a career or a destiny in life?

What would the world be like when increasing numbers of people live indefinitely, and children must compete with previous generations—generations that refuse to die—for jobs, space, and every other resource?

Would religion be meaningful absent the prospect of death? If men and women can achieve extended or eternal life here on Earth, would the motivation for following the ethical teachings of religion be weakened? What do leading clergy say about the prospect of extended life on earth?

What would it mean to pledge love until death do you part, if death could never do you part? What is the future of marriage, of the ideal of romantic love, of the family, if human life span is unlimited?

How would functional immortality transform our attitudes toward justice—how, for example, will it change our attitude toward the death penalty? Or a sentence of life imprisonment?

What would become of poetry, literature, drama, and painting in a world of infinite youth?

It doesn’t seem to me we can confidently say, “They will never pull this off. It isn’t even worth considering.” Strange things have already happened in my own lifetime.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves these questions?