> Anyway, this got me thinking about humanity's future. I believe there is an outside chance that people from my generation (I'm 20, for those who don't know) will be immortal. I'm pretty sure that within the next century our technology will increase so exponentially that will conquer most of what we call "natural causes" of death. Even if this doesn't happen in that time frame, it is possible that people alive today will see their lifespans increased an order of magnitude to the point where de facto immortality is possible.
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> I don't really want to debate whether or not this is possible or likely (nobody can say for certain, obviously). What I'm more interested in is how humanity would deal with such an achievment. Imagine if you knew you would never die (ignore the fact that the universe will probably eventually end; a timeline of billions of years is long enough to be considered eternal for today). How would that affect you?

I read, in high school, a short story on the subject (entitled "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"), which some amount of research on TEH INTARWEB informs me was probably by Kurt Vonnegut, as he wrote a story by that title that appears to be on that subject. In short, it's about a society of people who live forever, and the results of this. Ancient, patriarchal clans all packed into one tiny apartment and such, since people keep being born and nobody's dying. Interesting, anyhow.