As much as I love these concepts and how it gets me thinking, I like to hope the idea of immortality will always be science fiction. Assuming it will happen, I hope it is after my lifetime and I wouldn't want to wish it upon anyone. First, I wouldn't want to have to choose whether to live forever or not. If I choose the immortal life and later change my mind, that would leave me with suicide or being killed as my options to get out of it. If others could choose to be immortal and I choose otherwise, I sense abuses in the fold and being an outcast for the choice. Ultimately, I don't think humans could ever achieve anything close to a utopian society so I only see current abuses of our world continuing while adding new abuses. Thus, I would not want to live forever in a place that is not good to live in.

The argument could be made that we could and will have other options besides the Earth. I don't see this as impossible but I also don't see it happening anytime soon. The effects of achieving one of these ideas will probably greatly impact the other depending on which happens first. The speed and necessity of the second achievement will increase rapidly, I imagine.

Ultimately, this could be what we need to "fix" things and society could realize that we need to do things differently if we are going to live forever. Things would have to change. But the cynical side of me still says that humans cannot change as a 100% whole and there will still be those looking to take advantage of the system and the only way to check this would be through a system that ultimately would be oppressive to most people. In this, I don't think Sci-Fi is all that far off of the logical end.

Fer"Will head for the Grey Havens"rick