There are two types of people. The former welcome scientific and technological progress because they expect remarkable changes from it - for example, eternal youth. Others are turned into techno-optimists by circumstances. Mikhail Batin, an anti-aging enthusiast, represented the first type in our editorial office, and Konstantin Deblikov, the owner of two (actually even six) hand prostheses, represented the second.
About information
Konstantin Deblikov: right after the accident, I remembered about the video with some incredible prostheses - dexterous, beautiful, controlled by the power of thought. I thought I only needed to find the money, and I would have new hands - if not better than the old ones, then at least not much worse.
It turns out that if anything has improved in recent years, it's the quality of photos and videos. The principle of operation of the prostheses that I use now were proposed in the mid-1950s by Soviet developers, and since then no revolutions in upper limb prosthetics have occurred and will not happen for another five to ten years. Dentures may look futuristic (and that's good!), But …
Mikhail Batin: the flow of information about new discoveries has served us in disservice: it seems to us that scientists have already found a cure for cancer, have learned to grow new organs - the impossible has become possible. This is not true. Everything that we learn about from the news is most often at the development stage, and for this to really work, money is needed: for equipment, for research - fundamental and clinical. In Russia, only one laboratory deals with aging problems - and fifty is needed; there will be perhaps four hundred of them in the world, but four thousand are needed. We will definitely defeat aging - if we only want to and spend a lot of energy on it.
Konstantin Deblikov (left) and Mikhail Batin (right).
Promotional video:
About choosing a path
Konstantin Deblikov: there are prostheses - and there is a technology for limb transplantation; neither one nor the other gives all the possibilities of ordinary healthy hands and feet. The transplanted body parts mean that you need to drink medicine for the rest of your life and even in the most successful cases less than 50% of the functionality of healthy hands the same can be said for the most modern dentures. Therefore, if doctors find a way to transplant arms and legs so that they work like their own, it will be great. And if denture manufacturers suddenly make a breakthrough and do something fantastic, that will be good too.
Mikhail Batin: the future will be the way we want it. Now technologies are developing in parallel, it is difficult to say which one will determine our future life. Learning how to reverse aging is great, growing a new, healthy body is great, and the best thing, of course, is to move the brain into a computer.
Konstantin Deblikov.
About artificial intelligence
Konstantin Deblikov: modern hand prostheses are controlled rather roughly, with Morse code: a dash - contraction of one forearm muscle, a dot - another. And even if the prosthesis has thirty gestures, I can only switch between these two signals. To make prostheses truly comfortable, you need to read the contractions of a larger number of muscles, diversify control. Developers are already trying to do this: they add sensors, use artificial intelligence to more accurately interpret signals.
Mikhail Batin: all our further development will depend on the ability to work with big data, which means on artificial intelligence. This also applies to the study of aging: the body is a very complex thing, and our methods must be just as complex.
What we have
Konstantin Deblikov: superpowers are not needed. Once we with "Motorika" (a Russian company for the development and production of prostheses) made a custom prosthesis on which you could write electronic music, and it was interesting - but only because I love making music. Everything else is little things.
Mikhail Batin: We already know something - for example, a simple fact: a low-calorie diet and physical activity reduce the risk of developing atherosclerosis, one of the signs of aging. But there is much more to be learned, but for now those who are simply younger are the closest to a wonderful future.
Anastasia Shartogasheva
