I’d like you to read Altered Carbon

In a future where consciousness becomes a commodity, former soldier Takeshi Kovacs has to solve a murder involving some of the most powerful citizens of Earth — Meths. This is in reference to the biblical figure Methuselah

“Thus all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty-nine years; and he died.”

Genesis 5:21–27

The ill or infirm can have their cortical stack transferred and thus move their consciousness into another body or ‘sleeve’. And unlike Methuselah the rich can expect to live as long as they can afford said sleeve and other ancillary costs. The book has a lot to say about technology, about belief and about us. But more than anything, I feel it is very prescient about the way life extension is going to go.

Stem cell treatments are $5000 to $50000 per infusion. Monthly costs for hormone replacement therapies are a few hundred to a few thousand every month. Oncology treatments can amount to several hundred thousand dollars a year, such as the one former President Jimmy Carter took for melanoma. Experimental gene therapies may be a few short years away for these purposes (it has already been linked with sports).

Where it speaks about us is through the medium of identity. Do people change? Is it nature or nurture when it comes to a particular vice or inclination?

And when your consciousness is uploaded to a body you do not recognise, who is really under the mask anymore? In this book, Takeshi suffers through…