Extra Life

I enjoy Steven Johnson’s books – a blend of history, science, and creativity, that strikes just the right balance for my reading interests. His latest book, Extra Life, is subtitled: “A short history of living longer”. Average global life expectancy has only recently risen significantly over the past century thereabouts, especially as infant/child mortality has reduced, among many other improvements in medicine, public health, and work safety. 

 

There is a chapter that recaps the masterful story Johnson tells in the book that made him famous, The Ghost Map – whereby several unsung heroes traced the outbreak of cholera in the East End of London to a contaminated water source. But there are several other interesting stories. I was familiar with the role of Mary Montagu and variolation – which then led to vaccination, one of the most important advances in public health. I’d heard of W.E.B. DuBois’s work in Philadelphia, although Johnson provided a number of details I wasn’t aware of. I did not know about the work of Nancy Howell among the !Kung tribe in the Kalahari – a very fascinating read.

 

Johnson takes great pains to repeat one of his main points – that such “discoveries” or “improvements” came about through the concerted effort of many people, not just a lone genius. This is apparent in his story about pasteurization. We’ve heard of Louis Pasteur, but perhaps not about the many other folks who were key to its widespread use. We’ve heard of Alexander Fleming and penicillin, but if not for many others, not much would have come out of his serendipitous discovery. It’s the network of people that push for change that ultimately led to large segments of humankind being able to enjoy longer, perhaps, healthier lives. Johnson also shines a light on the role of data and statistics in all of this – I liked how his examples highlighted this aspect.

 

What I was really interested in was what Johnson had to say about transhumanism and the quest to extend life significantly further than what seem to be the present limits. Our bodies are programmed to die after some time – it’s built into our biology or at least we and many other organisms have evolved to reproduce offspring and then die ourselves in the hope that the children are able to repeat the feat in the next generation. Johnson touches on the topic in the last bit of his epilogue. There isn’t much groundbreaking on the scientific front, I’m sorry to say, which is why the popularity of sci-fi and fantasy in plumbing this topic will continue – Voldemort notwithstanding. Maybe there will be some sort of strange merging of mind and machine, and transhumans live in virtual reality. Then the bonus of classic video games will finally become reality: Extra Life!

 

P.S. Two of Johnson’s other books, I’ve recently blogged about: Wonderland and How We Got to Now.