In the past one hundred years, we’ve managed to double our life expectancy – that’s an astounding twenty thousand extra days of life, on average, for each person on earth. The reasons for our increased longevity are the manifestation of an incredibly complex and multilayered sequence of advances, innovations and events.
In this session, hear more about the many forces that conspired to enable us to live increasingly longer lives, as detailed in bestselling author Steven Johnson’s latest book Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer. Steven discusses how the many advances of modern life—from medical breakthroughs, to seatbelts, to improved standards of living—have collectively increased our longevity. As our public health systems falter and we face an increasingly uncertain future, Mr. Johnson also addresses how we can avoid a future decrease in life expectancy by harnessing existing technologies and leveraging the power of human ingenuity.
