The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil

Programmable Blood. One pervasive system that has already been the subject of a comprehensive conceptual redesign based on reverse engineering is our blood. I mentioned earlier Rob Freitas’s nanotechnology-based designs to replace our red blood cells, platelets, and white blood cells.11 Like most of our biological systems our red blood cells perform their oxygenating function very inefficiently, so Freitas has redesigned them for optimal performance. Because his respirocytes (robotic red blood cells) would enable one to go hours without oxygen,12 it will be interesting to see how this development is dealt with in athletic contests. Presumably the use of respirocytes and similar systems will be prohibited in events like the Olympics, but then we will face the prospect of teenagers (whose bloodstreams will likely contain respirocyte-enriched blood) routinely outperforming Olympic athletes. Although prototypes are still one to two decades in the future, their physical and chemical requirements have been worked out in impressive detail. Analyses show that Freitas’s designs would be hundreds or thousands of times more capable of storing and transporting oxygen than our biological blood.