News Details

On the future of man and technology

27 January 2011, 19:00
Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Lingnerallee 1

Will we live forever? - Book presentation and Korsakow Show*

Dr. Roman Brinzanik, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics, Berlin
Tobias Hülswitt, Berlin

host: Prof. Dr. Christian Schwarke

 
Current scientific research on life, intelligence and matter has achieved revolutionary results that challenge our conception of the nature of the human body and mind. The inventor and futurologist Ray Kurzweil deduces from possible technological applications of this knowledge the vision of a near future in which artificial intelligence will have excelled human intelligence in all areas and man will have merged with intelligent technology, disease and aging will be combated by genetic engineering and nano-medicine and, finally, no one will any longer have to die a natural death.

What in this vision is science, what religious promises of salvation, what pure science fiction? The writer Tobias Hülswitt and the physicist Roman Brinzanik conducted interviews with prominent scientists, including stem cell researcher Hans R. Schöler and brain researcher Wolf Singer. They wanted to find out what is the current state of science and what serious scenarios of the future look like. In addition, they explored the social consequences of new technologies and the possibility of a radical extension of life with the President of the Max Planck Society, Peter Gruss.

 

*A Korsakow Show uses elements of a panel discussion, film, and theatre - with the audience being part of the play. The audience can interact by voting with laser pointers.

This event is a cooperation of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museums Dresden with the MPI-CBG.