Is Longevity The New Luxury?

Silicon Valley tech billionaires are investing in startups they hope will ‘solve’ death

- Sophie Kalkreuth

The quest for eternal life is as old as life itself, although up until now the results have been rather grim. In the oldest piece of epic literature, circa 2100 BC, King Gilgamesh undertakes a long and perilous journey to discover the secret of eternal life only to learn that, “When the gods created man, they let death be his share.”

But Gilgamesh’s fate is likely preferable to that of Tithonus in Greek mythology, for whom Eos begs Zeus to grant eternal life. Eos, however, forgets to ask Zeus for her lover’s eternal youth as well, leaving Tithonus to grow everlastingly old and withered.

Roughly two thousand years later in Silicon Valley, a place where technology has effectively replaced religion, tech titans are the protagonists in a new tale wherein death are exits to be ‘disrupted’, and eternal life is simply a code waiting to be hacked.

“I think there are probably three main modes of approaching (death),” the billionaire Mr. Peter Thiel explained in a recent interview. “You can accept it, you can deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.”

Tech titans like Mr. Thiel are increasingly pinning their hopes and their fortunes on biotech startups whose goal is ‘life extension’, or as some put it, to solve ‘the problem of death’.