Do you want to live another 100 years or more? Some experts say that scientific advances will one
day enable humans to last tens of years beyond what is now seen as the natural limit of the human life
span.
      "I think we are knocking at the door of immortality(永生) , " said  Michael  Zey, a  Montclair State
University business professor and author of two books on the future. "I think by 2075 we will see it and
that"s a conservative estimate(保守的估计)."
      At the conference in San Francisco, Donald Louria, a professor at New Jersey Medical School in
Newark said advances in using genes as well as nanotechnology(纳米技术) make it likely that humans
will live in the future beyond what has been possible in the past. "There is a great push so that people can
live from 120 to 180 years," he said. "Some have suggested that there is no limit and that people could
live to 200 or 300 or 500 years.
     However,many scientists who specialize in ageing are doubtful about it and say the human body is just
not designed to last past about 120 years. Even with healthier lifestyles and less disease,they say the
failure of the brain and organs will finally lead all humans to death.
     Scientists also differ on what kind of life the super aged might live. "lt remains to be seen if you pass
120 ,you know; could you be healthy enough to have good quality of life?" said Leonard Poon, director
 of the University of Georgia Gerontology Centre. "At present people who could get to that point are not
in good health at all. "

      Gadgets (小装置) can be wildly expensive and quickly out-of-date, but Steven Poole is still the
first to buy them. Technological innovations (创新) are often quite stupid. The idea that you might
want to walk down the street holding a mobile phone in front of your face, just to experience the
wonders of video calling, is clearly ridiculous. Luckily for the tech companies, however, there are
some people who jump at the chance to buy into new gadgets before they are fully ready and cheap
enough for the mass-market. They are called early adopters, and their fate is a terrible one. I should
know, since I am one myself.
      Early adopters have a Mecca: it’s Tokyo’s Akihabara district, also known as “Electric City”.
There, in 1999, I bought a digital camera, a gizmo that few people in Britain had heard of. Over the
next few years I watched in great sadness as digital cameras became more popular, cheaper and more
powerful, until better models could be had for a quarter of the price I had paid. Did I feel stupid? What
I actually did was this: I splashed out more money last year for a new one, one that let me feel pleasantly
ahead of the curve once again. But I know that cannot last, and I’ll probably have to buy another in a
few years.
      Thus early adopters are betting on other people eventually feeling the same desires. And it’s worse
if that future never arrives. Early adopters of the Betamax home-video format in the 1970s could only
look on in sadness when their investment was nullified（使无效）by the success of VHS. All sorts of
apparently splendid inventions, such as videogame consoles like the Atari Jaguar have been abandoned
to the dustbin of history right after a few early adopters bought in. Those who invested thousands in a
Segway motorized scooter on the wave of ridiculous advertising campaigns that accompanied its launch
a couple of years ago can join the club.
      You might think we should just stop being so silly, save our money, and wait to see what really
catches on. But the logic of the industry is such that, if everyone did that, no innovation would become
popular. Imagine the third person to buy an ordinary telephone soon after Alexander Graham Bell had
invented it. Who was he going to call? Maybe he simply bought two phones, one for a special friend.
But still, the usefulness and eventual popularity of the device wasn’t clear at the time. Nobody dreamed
of the possibility of being able to speak to any one of millions of people. And yet if he, and the hundreds
and thousands of early adopters after him, had not bought into the idea, the vast communication networks
that we all take for granted today would never have been built.
     The same goes, indeed, for all new technologies. Those guys holding bricks to their ears that we
laughed at in the 1980s made the current mobile phone possible. People who bought DVD players
when they still cost a fortune, instead of today’s cheap one at the local supermarket, made sure that
the new format succeeded. Early adopters’ desire for desires supported the future financially. And
what did they get for their pains? They got a hole in their bank accounts and inferior, unperfected
technology. But still, they got it first. And today they are still at work, buying overpriced digital radios,
DVD recorders and LCD televisions, and even 3G phones, so that you will be eventually be able to
buy better and less expensive ones.
      So next time you see a gadget-festooned geek (满身新潮玩意的土包子) and feel tempted to
sneer (讥笑), think for a minute. Without early adopters, there would be no cheap mobile phones or
DVD players; there would be no telephone or television either. We are the tragic, unsung foot soldiers
of the technology revolution. We’re the desire-addicted pioneers, pure in heart, dreaming of a better
future. We make expensive mistakes so you don’t have to. Really, we are heroes.