Cheating Death in Silicon Valley Click

That's it from me, Duncan Golestani

will be here at 2am.

Now on BBC News,

it's time to Click.

This week, preserving people during

life and after death. The digital

legacy that you leave behind. And

lots of reasons. -- freezers.

Ah, the streets of San Francisco!

Mecca for technology innovators and

officially on are those. A

destination where the cult of geek

reigns supreme. Everyone's got that

billion-dollar idea here and

everyone wants to save the world.

The ethos of nothing's impossible

runs in the veins and Twitter feeds

of every twentysomething Zuckerberg

wannabe. Now Silicon Valley is

taking on life's biggest challenge,

death.

Dave Lee has been looking at how

Silicon Valley is trying to help us

all live longer.

This will be my last meal for 36

hours. Like a growing number of

people in Silicon Valley, I'm about

to try fasting, something some here

believe could contribute to

extending our lifespan.

My advice to

you is sleep in really late so you

don't have to deal with it!

Christian Brown is a biotechnology

journalist. She tells me living

longer is becoming something of an

obsession for many tech people.

We

tend to see people not just being in

the body as a machine but talking

about it metaphorically as a

machine.

Is it making any progress?

It's growing so quickly right now,

we understand so much more this year

than we did last year even but the

other thing about science is the

more questions you and so, the more

questions there are.

The following

morning my first stop after a

skipped breakfast was Jeffrey Woo.

He is chief executive of a firm

called human. He says fasting can

improve productivity and increase

our lifespan. Jeffrey promotes the

36 hour faster that I'm on and his

company sells products they claim

will boost your body's reaction to

fasting.

So when you're extending

beyond a 24-hour fast you're dipping

into a metabolic state called key

ptosis, which stores your body fat

into an efficient source of energy.

As one gets better at being in key

ptosis, cognitive clarity ends up

being a productivity boost.

To test

it we measured the key to level in

my body with a simple blood test. My

ketone levels were low, has to be

expected, but next I drank one of

their ketone producing products.

You

can expect to within 15 minutes are

equivalent to five to seven days

worth of fasting in your system.

The

science behind what benefits can be

had isn't exactly watertight. One

study suggests one of human's other

products may not have any greater

effect than a cup of coffee. The

moment of truth for me came around

30 minutes later. Wow.

2.2. OK.

Eventually equivalent to having

fasted for three or four days in 30

minutes.

Theeb session with reduced

the nation and longevity here has

even been satirised on HBO's Silicon

Valley.

It's my transfusion

associate.

Like all great comedy,

it's funny because it's true.

One incredible idea being tested

here can be traced back to this man,

Paul Burt. In the mid-1800 he

claimed if you took an old mouse and

literally stitched it together with

a young mouse, the young mouse would

become more agile, have a better

memory and heal more quickly once it

had the young blood flowing through

its brains. Of course we can't start

stitching humans together but there

is a start-up that thinks it can do

than expected thing.

This is a California based start-up

that believes weekly injections of

blood plasma from young people can

help fight of our signers.

We

treated these patients once a week

for four weeks with one unit of

plasma and we found the treatment

was safe and very importantly,

although it was a short study to see

learning and memory improvements,

but it was good enough to see some

near-term improvements.

The team said it found those treated

were more capable of basic daily

tasks and more aware of their

surroundings. Encouraging but far

from conclusive. So far it's only

been proven that this technique

works with mice, but it's hoped that

extensive human studies might help

this team unlock the secret to

easily rejuvenate in humans.

Ultimately we might be able to

identify agents that can be

administered orally.

To gather this database set up a

partnership to get the blood plasma

from great Falls, a major

pharmaceutical firm based in Spain.

People are being paid to give up

their young blood.

Well, that's a

fascinating ethical question. I

actually think that there is a large

pool of donors currently which is

increasing and I think there's an

increasing recognition of how

valuable plasma proteins are.

To get

some answers on whether or not

fantastical ideas could actually

work, I went to visit one of the

world's foremost experts on ageing.

Fasting elicits a response in your

body that triggers a protection

against many diseases associated

with age. So growing realisation

that multiple forms of fasting might

be beneficial in the long-term.

One

of them or perhaps outrageous ideas

is that you can transfer young blood

into an older person and that will

rejuvenate and slow the ageing

process, is that true?

First let's

talk about the science in mice. It

is actually amazing work. The

science is really strong. Now,

taking this and bringing it to

humans is a completely different

story, so the idea for example that

one would take human plasma or human

plasma product and give it to humans

to prevent ageing is, in my opinion,

lunacy.

Finally, my 36 hours were up. I'm

not sure it's worth it, the lows I

had last night and this morning were

awful and to do that regularly I

think might lead to a longer life

but it certainly wouldn't be a

happier one. What could be really

interesting, though, is if these

companies can recreate the positive

effects of fasting without the hard

work of having to go without food

for such a long period of time. But

for now, I think I'm going to choose

breakfast.

That was Dave Lee. And while the

quest for a longer life might take a

little while longer, technology has

been looking at other ways to help

us live on through avatars. The

University of Salford California has

been creating virtual versions of

Holocaust survivors for the last few

years, preserving their memories and

experiences for future generations.

Survivors are interviewed at length

inside a special light stage used by

Hollywood to capture them in 360

degrees. Using voice recognition and

machine learning, anyone can

interact with these digital

holograms at special exhibit sites.

One end, that was my dad's Aston

Martin survived, so from the

immediate extended family there were

three of us that survived.

I went along for a scan myself. Now

the rig admittedly looks rather make

sure with lots of low-cost cameras

capturing me from different angles.

By scanning some extreme facial

expressions, most mouse movements

and emotions can also be simulated

by merging between them.

Right now

we can capture ourselves as we are

today, perhaps our people, our lives

are going to get older and the next

generation would see them any more.

Can I capture grandma and grandpa?

Can I capture enough of how they've

moved, what they think to a certain

extent, we combine that with

artificial intelligence where it

would be possible to have an

interaction with a person who is not

alive any more.

Here in the UK the four of the

project is also working on a similar

idea at the national Holocaust

centre and museum, virtually

preserving survivor experiences.

Bardet digital legacy isn't just for

people like these. Most of us will

leave a will regarding our

possessions or instructions for our

funeral arrangements but now

emphasis is also being placed on our

digital footprint too. I spoke to

Facebook's head of global policy

about our postmortem account

options. This is such an incredibly

sensitive subject that for Facebook

I would imagine is an impossible

task to get right.

It's certainly a

very difficult area for us. Losing

people is so hard and at Facebook we

want to make sure that we are

respecting that person's life and

respecting the choices that person

made, but we also want to make sure

we're making this process as easy as

possible for the family members that

are going through it and actually

it's sometimes hard for us to

satisfy both of those.

So I'd

imagine a lot of people do not tell

you, Facebook, what they want to

happen to their accounts after their

death, so how do you know what to

do?

That's right, a lot of people

don't. I want to be clear that there

is a way to tell Facebook what you

would like to happen to your account

after you pass away, we call it our

legacy contact. You can actually

designate someone who can look after

your account after you're gone.

Basically this gives the person, you

can choose what authority you want

the person to have, but this gives

the person the choice to, say,

change your profile photo or add

friends or put a post at the top of

your profile. They do not become

you, they cannot control every

feature of the account, they can

take some actions, they can choose

to delete the account, but they do

not have the ultimate control to

look at your private messages.

Family and friends have particular

feelings about what happens to

someone's memories when they're

gone, they don't always agree. How

do you even begin to settle those

disputes?

We will delete the profile if one

person asks for it. Now, having gone

through this myself, I lost my

husband a little more than a year

ago, and my experience was that it

was very powerful for me and very

comforting for me to be able to look

at things that he had written, to

see photos that he had posted. It

made me feel like I could still

connect with him and that he still

was a very active presence in my

life.

I wonder whether you had any

advice to people watching this on

how to go forward if they experience

something similar?

I think the

important thing is have the

conversations now and talk about how

you would want to treat your digital

legacy, including what do you want

to happen to your online presence,

your Facebook account, your other

accounts, and what is your plan for

making sure that your estate, all

the practical things that we don't

like to think about very much in our

daily lives are taken care of so

your loved ones don't have to go

through that.

Welcome to the week in tech. It was

the week that the head of Microsoft

said the world is running out of

computing capacity and that quantum

is the only way forward.

A new degree in flying car

engineering was announced at an

e-learning school in Silicon Valley.

And Facebook invented a new unit of

time called a Flick. It's designed

to help video editors and people

working in visual effects. The new

unit lasts longer than a nanosecond

but is shorter than a microsecond.

And Sky decided to take on the likes

of Amazon and Netflix, launching its

new now TV stick. It's also

announced its goodbye to the old sky

satellite dishes as all its services

go online from 2019. Also this week

General Motors became the first of

driving car manufacturer to be sued

over an accident. Its Chevrolet

bolted a motorcyclist back in

December. Meanwhile Tesla had its

own autopilot problems when a model

-esque ploughed into a fire truck.

The race to put the first privately

funded spacecraft on the moon is

over and not with a rocket launch

but a tweet and a statement. The

Google lunar X prize offered a $200

million prize fund for the first

team to land on the moon by March.

Finally, a robot working in a

supermarket has been fired by just

one week for scaring customers

await. Fabio was an Experian to see

if robots would interact well with

shoppers but it turns out it's

instructions such as the beer is in

the alcohol aisle infuriated people

rather than helping them. The job

market is tough out there!

Unexpected

item in bagging area...

A familiar

phrase, but as we've seen this week

one that we may not need to hear

much longer. Amazon Go's Seattle

store finally launched on Monday.

You can check in with your phone,

cameras and sensors will log what

you pick up and you will be

instantly charged. They -- aren't

the only companies trying to crack

the cashier was supermarket model.

It's time for a rather

unconventional shopping experience.

The first thing I'm going to do is

get out my bag. I visited this north

London convenience store, where IBM

have been putting their prototype

instant check out to the test.

Because when it comes to actually

checking out, the ID cards that sit

on all of the products will be

instantly scanned in one go, so you

can put everything on here

straightaway, although it does sort

of feel wrong. And something sweet.

So I have everything they need in my

shopping bag, but I can't leave just

yet. In fact, this is the fun bit.

It's time for the instant check out.

I put down my bag full of items and

immediately what's on at that

seamlessly comes up on the screen.

If your cons -- you are concerned

this could make things too easy for

shoplifters, because obviously it

looks like you've legitimately paid,

then fear not. There is something to

overcome that. Readers can be placed

right by the doors, so if anybody

does try to leave with something

that hasn't been scanned, the alarm

will go. For customers who are happy

to share their habits and behaviour,

artificial intelligence will come

into play to combine that

information with data on their

surroundings.

Convenience store like

this will drastically change what

people will come in and buy, how

many people come in and when. It

able to use all of those mass

volumes of data, with

predictability, all of that means we

will be able to tell the retailer

what to keep in stock and when.

And

that's a real driver behind all of

this. To understand our shopping

habits from the moment we enter a

shop until we leave. This mill and

store, dubbed the supermarket of the

future, features a lot of screens.

-- Milan store. There are cameras

collecting data on customers'

movements and interactions with

products. The designers of the space

of that as well as providing an

insight into the retailer the data

collection will better the overall

shopping experience.

A lot of

information available regarding food

does not appear anywhere when you

get into the supermarket, so all of

this data availability doesn't show

up, so we need to give that kind of

information back to the customer.

But while most of us are still

actually engaging with humans, it

seems that the cashier less shop

could be coming to a place near you

fairly soon.

Now, we've been looking at various

ways to try and extend human life,

possibly indefinitely, but

researchers can't do it yet and so

on till they can there are those who

are offering to put your life on

pause. Marc Cieslak has been the

Arizona to meet the

self-preservation society.

Debt and taxes, as the saying goes,

are the two things none of us can

avoid. What about if there was a

workaround for death, some way of

extending our physical existence on

this planet? This was founded in

1972 in order to preserve people at

the point of death, freeze them and

then when technology is sufficiently

advanced revive them in the future.

A process it calls cryonics.

This is

an interesting graphic on the

history of cryonics, which goes back

to 1773, when Benjamin Franklin

fought about the future of America.

What goes on in this space? I am

seeing this simulates what you would

normally perform when somebody dies.

Exactly. We have to wait for the

legal death to be declared. Remove

the patience to the ice bath, we

cover them ice, and it the same time

we will restart all kinds of things.

We will use a respirator to recover

breathing, we will use this

mechanical CBI device and we are

doing that because we want to

administer a series of different

medications to protect their cells.

It is even though the patient is

dead?

If I when you donate an organ,

even though the person has been

declared dead that doesn't mean all

of the cells are suddenly dead.

Patients are effectively pumped full

of antifreeze to protect their

tissue from freezing the process

which comes later. It costs up to

$200,000 to preserve a full body and

$60,000 if somebody just wants their

head preserved.

This is the

operating room. We put the patient

on the special operating table. This

is designed to shape the patient for

long-term storage. We don't want

someone at a low B with their arm

sticking out.

-- with their arms

sticking out. Usually when we do a

separation, we do it if you

vertebrae down, and then place the

brain plus the skull upside down.

Essentially it is the same process,

we remove the blood and fluids from

the brain and protect them against

ice formation.

Why would people want their head

separated from their body?

My view is that unless I die early

in an accident, my body will be in

lousy shape anyway and the whole

thing will have to be regenerated.

Why go to the extra cost of storing

my whole body, which is ten times

the volume of just my head?

The corridors here are aligned with

photos of people who are already

frozen in Alcor's storage facility.

This is where we store all of our

patients, we have 152.

These are all

of your patience?

Yes. All of our

patients here. About two thirds of

them are in Europe. -- are in a

different section.

They are just

heads?

Yes. Half of the members are

full body. This contains four full

body patience.

Doesn't have any

legal obligation to the people

stored here, as they technically

donated their bodies to science.

What happens if you have a power

cut?

We don't need electricity for

this. These are passive vessels,

very expensive firma flasks. We just

use the liquid nitrogen to maintain

a temperature.

Alcor says it's a

non-profit organisation and it has

1150 people signed up for its

services, including Silicon Valley

billionaire Peter Teele. But what

makes ordinary people shall upto

$200,000 for cryogenic preservation?

Act in the UK, this man has not

himself and his family up for just

that via a different outfit called

The Cryonics Institute.

Imagine

being on your deathbed, dying, and

then immediately waking up

straightaway because the passage of

time would mean anything, because I

will be dead. So I'll wake up

immediately and hopefully I will be

able to remember things. Have my

memory intact, hopefully.

Your whole

family is going to be preserved as

well?

Yeah. Luckily my wife and

daughter are for the idea and are

signed up members of the institute.

But it is all too good to be true?

We spoke to a neuroscientist who

have serious misgivings about the

basic foundations of cryonics.

You

really can't afford to freeze

biological tissue until it has been

appropriately protected, but unless

you take it down to those low

temperatures for protection quite

quickly, it will continue to

decompose. My problem with the

cryonics dream, the wishful thinking

contracts that are sold, if they

haven't resolved that conflict.

There is no evidence that they can

get the antifreeze into all those

micro nooks and crannies in the

brain and satisfactorily protected.

We put this to Alcor, who provided a

detailed response:

Said is this the ultimate insurance

policy then?

Yeah, it doesn't cost

us anything. A bit of money.

That was Marc Cieslak and that's it

from San Francisco the now. Don't

forget, there's loads of extra stuff

from us on Twitter and on Facebook.

Thanks for watching and see you

soon.