ABSTRACT
Society has had little time to adjust to the rapid increase in human life expectancy. By 1900, life expectancy slowly increased to the point that advanced countries like the United States could boast of an average life expectancy of forty-seven years. It is at the point that the Superlongevity Revolution begins in earnest. This chapter shows that the Superlongevity Revolution can be divided into three distinct stages. In stage I, it labels Life Extension, unfolded roughly between 1900 and 2000. The gains resulted from the appearance of vaccines and antibiotics and improvements in public and personal hygiene. In Stage II of the Superlongevity Revolution, the chapter looks at methods to enhance the human shell, to simply make ourselves look better, to create what I label the "ultra-human." In stage III, it discovers how to extend life, perhaps indefinitely. A significant body of theoretic and empirical findings suggests that there are few physical limits to the human life span.
