Humans, for a long time, have been trying—one way or another—to live forever.
Historically, we’ve chased the Fountain of Youth, Eden, El Dorado. We’ve mummified bodies and built pyramids. Across religions and eras, we’ve imagined afterlives and rebirths, tried to codify the idea that death might not be the end.
The itch has always been there: to continue on in some form or another.
But for the first time in human history, we might actually be getting close to doing it.
Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Literally.
With Peter Thiel’s recent (and unsettling) interview about moving beyond being human, and billions of dollars being funneled into longevity, cryogenics, and brain-machine interfaces, we’re actively trying to engineer our way to immortality.
And over the last few weeks, death and the idea of what comes after have been hanging around me. Not in a dramatic way. But it’s been there. Quietly shaping what I’ve been thinking about.
Which made me want to take stock of where we already are. Because we’re not starting from zero.
In many ways, we’ve already begun.
Some People Live Forever
At the time of writing this, I’m in Japan visiting my girlfriend’s family in Shizuoka. It’s been a meaningful trip for many reasons I’ll get into next week, but one moment in particular stuck with me.
We visited the shrine of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Shogun of the Edo period.
He’s been gone for over 400 years and his grave has since moved. And yet, people still come here to offer prayers.
His presence hasn’t faded — if anything, it’s evolved. His name lives on not just in history books, but in pop culture. The new TV series, Shōgun, pulled his legend back into the mainstream and even set the record for Emmy wins in a single year.
That’s not just remembrance. That’s a kind of resurrection.
You see it elsewhere too:
da Vinci’s Mona Lisa still draws millions of visitors a year, half a millennium later.
We still quote Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor who died in 180 AD.
The words of the Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus, and Confucius — all still shape entire nations, movements, and our individual morals.
We fight wars over these legacies. We build temples, dedicate libraries, and name our national holidays around them.
These people, through what they created, taught, or accomplished, have become immortal.
And while immortality used to be reserved for the very select few, it’s starting to look more accessible.
Living Forever Online
Everyone leaves a trail online. Our photos, our messages, our essays, our tweets.
Take a few dozen of my Substack posts and my old Instagram posts and you’ve probably got enough to build a passable AI version of me.
Please do not do that.
But you could. And in some form or another, people already are.
Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian recently posted a video of his late mother, reconstructed from an old picture. She hugs him in a way that, well, never happened.
For him, it’s a memory he reclaimed that he can revisit and cherish.
For others, it appears dystopian. It risks distorting real memory and replacing what actually happened with what we wished to have happened.
One thing is for sure: no one disputes the power of such technology.
And it’s just one example. People are already training AI on voice recordings and rebuilding entire personas from old texts and messages.
That is our current reality: anyone can continue to feel alive through the data they have left behind. Reanimated in new ways long after they’re gone, with or without their consent.
The train has already left the station.
Bits of are scattered everywhere — in iMessage threads, old photos, voice notes, and old Facebook posts. Wiping your data from the internet is notoriously hard. And that means anyone can begin to reanimate us in ways we never anticipated.
The harsh reality is you don’t really get to decide if you live forever, reanimated in one form or another.
But what about actually living forever?
Well, that might not be too far off either.
Living Forever IRL
As mentioned earlier, billions of dollars are being funneled into health tech aimed at slowing and even stopping aging altogether. And longevity movements like Bryan Johnson’s Don’t Die are gaining more traction.
Meanwhile, people like Peter Thiel view robotics and AI as the next evolutionary leap for humans.
Living forever is no longer just a hypothetical. It’s an engineering problem that will inevitably be solved.
And if I had to put money on it, it’s one we’ll solve within my lifetime (that or we blow each other up first).
I could probably write several other posts on its own about why “solving death” is both a good and bad thing.
But I’ll leave it at this: an eternity of doing laundry and taxes seems like a tough load to bear.
How to Live Forever
I don’t want to live on inside a tool. I don’t want some version of me answering questions in a chatbot, or an immortal body wired into the cloud. I want something simpler, and maybe harder.
So then, how can I possibly live forever?
I want to live on in the people I love. In their stories, their memories, their photos. I want something I make, even just once, to leave a mark worth carrying forward.
That, to me, is building a legacy. And legacy is living forever.
It might mean something small: a single word, a visual, a moment of recognition.
It might also mean something bigger. A large project, an enduring work of art, or a lifelong relationship, a family.
In any event, to create anything that endures requires a long commitment and a deep sense of conviction.
You don’t stumble into this type of immortality. You build toward it, day by day, action by action, with your head down and your heart in it. Even when it’s hard, because it’s hard.
had a great piece that touched on making these types of heavy things.It’s an absurd task, no doubt. But I don’t think there’s a better or more noble one in a world of cheap dopamine.
So if we’re trying to live forever, maybe the answer isn’t in digital twins or trans-humanism.
Maybe it’s just this: Do something worth being remembered by the people you love.
That’s how to live forever.
What I Did This Week — Hand Tracking
As mentioned, I am in Japan traveling right now so this week I kinda did fuck all.
BUT.
I did have a few minutes to do some work in preparation for the upcoming gallery. One piece will involve a bit of motion tracking.
This was actually a lot of fun to make. It uses the mediapipe plugin to recognize your hands and poses. What a powerful tool.
The goal is to experiment beyond just hands and the webcam, but this was a fun start.
Something Beautiful — Kumanote Cafe Osaka
During our travels this week, we visited Kumanote Cafe in Osaka known as the “bear claw” cafe since they serve every drink from a little window in the wall.
The cafe was built to create a space for people with severe social anxiety to work as a barista. The wall and hole act as a cute way to take orders and serve drinks while limiting face-to-face interactions for employees, making it a less stressful work environment.
This design not only successfully helps the employee, but creates a novel and viral experience for visitors, actually driving business. It’s a perfect case of empowering employees to create a beautiful and unique experience. The shop also has set up a box to leave thank you notes for the employees.
The proceeds of the shop go towards mental health organizations in Japan, a long-time unspoken and massive ailment for the country. It’s small businesses like these that have the power to reverse a huge stigma in Japan.
Highly recommend a visit. The coffee, matcha, and parfait were amazing :P