The digital legacy that you leave behind. And lots of freezers. Ah, the streets of San Francisco mecca for Technology Innovators and aficionados. A destination where the cult of geek reigns supreme. Everyones got that billion dollar idea here and Everyone Wants to save the world. The ethos of nothings impossible runs in the veins and twitter feeds of every twentysomething zuckerberg wannabe. Now, Silicon Valley is taking on lifes biggest challenge death. Dave lee has been looking at how Silicon Valley is trying to help us all live longer. This will be my last mealfor 36 hours. Like a growing number of people in Silicon Valley, im about to try fasting something some here believe could contribute to extending our lifespan. My advice to you, just sleep in really late so you dont have to deal with it Kristen Brown is a biotechnology journalist. She tells me living longer is becoming something of an obsession for many techies. We tend to see people notjust thinking of their body as a machine but talking about it metaphorically as a machine. Are they actually making any progress . Its growing so quickly right now, we understand so much more this year than we did last year even, but the other thing about science is the more questions you answer, the more questions there are. The following morning, my first stop after i skipped brea kfast was geoffrey woo. Hes chief executive of a firm called hvmn. It promotes fasting as a way to boost productivity and increase our health span that is the number of years you are fully able before the troubles of old age. Geoffrey promotes the 36 hour fast that im on and his Company Sells products they claim will boost your bodys reaction to fasting. So when youre extending beyond a 24 hour fast, youre dipping into a metabolic state called ketosis, which converts your stored body fat into a really efficient source of Energy Called ketone bodies. As one gets better at being in ketosis, cognitive clarity ends up being a productivity boost. To test it, we measured the ketone level in my body with a simple blood test. My ketone levels were low, as could be expected, but next i drank one of hvmns ketone producing products. You can expect to see within 15 minutes equivalent to five to seven days worth of fasting level of ketones in your system. The Science Behind what benefits can be had isnt exactly watertight. One Study Suggests one of hvmns other products may not have any greater effect than a cup of coffee. The moment of truth for me came around 30 minutes later. Wow. 2. 2. 0k. So essentially equivalent to having fasted for three or four days in 30 minutes. The obsession with reduced rejuvenation and longevity here has the obsession with rejuvenation and longevity here has even been satirised on hbos Silicon Valley. Its my transfusion associate. Like all great comedy, its funny because its true. One incredible idea being tested here can be traced back to this man, paul bert. In the mid 1800s, he claimed if you took an old mouse and literally stitched it together with a young mouse, the old mouse would become more agile, have a better memory and heal more quickly once it had the young blood flowing through its veins. Of course, we cant start stitching humans together, but there is a start up that thinks it can do than expected thing. Alkahest is a california based start up that believes weekly injections of blood plasma from young people could fight the onset of alzheimers. We treated these patients once a week for four weeks with one unit of plasma, and we found the treatment was safe and, very importantly, although it was a short study to see learning and memory improvements, but it was good enough to see some near term improvements. The team said it found those treated were more capable of basic daily tasks and more aware of their surroundings. Encouraging but farfrom conclusive. So far, its only been proven that this technique works with mice but its hoped that extensive human studies might help this team unlock the secret to easily rejuvenating humans. Ultimately, we might be able to identify agents that can be administered orally. To gather this data, they set up a partnership to get the blood plasma from grifols, a major pharmaceutical firm based in spain. People are being paid to give up their young blood. Well, thats a fascinating ethical question. I actually think that there is a large pool of donors currently, which is increasing, and i think theres an increasing recognition of how valuable plasma proteins are. To get some answers on whether or not fantastical ideas could actually work, i went to visit one of the worlds foremost experts on ageing. Fasting elicits a response in your body that triggers a protection against many of the diseases associated with age. So theres growing realisation that multiple forms of fasting might actually be beneficial in the long term. One of the more perhaps outrageous ideas is that you can transfer young blood into an older person and that will rejuvenate and slow the ageing process. Is that true . First, lets talk about the science in mice. It is actually amazing work. The science is really strong. Now, taking this and bringing it to humans is a completely different story. So the idea, for example, that one would take human plasma or human plasma product and give it to humans to prevent ageing is, in my opinion, lunacy. Finally, my 36 hours were up. Im not sure its worth it. The lows i had last night and this morning were awful, and to do that regularly i think might lead to a longer life, but it certainly wouldnt be a happier one. What could be really interesting, though, is if these companies can recreate the positive effects of fasting without the hard work of having to go without food for such a long period of time. But for now, i think im going to choose breakfast. That was dave lee. And while the quest for a longer life might take a little while longer, technology has been looking at other ways to help us live on through avatars. The university of Southern California has been creating virtual versions of Holocaust Survivors for the past few years, preserving their memories and experiences for future generations. Survivors are interviewed at length inside a special light stage used by hollywood to capture them in 360 degrees. Using Voice Recognition and machine learning, anyone can interact with these digital holograms at special exhibit sites. Did any of your family members survive . One aunt that was my dads sister that survived so, from the immediate extended family, there were three of us that survived. I went along for a scan myself. Now, the rig admittedly looks rather makeshift with lots of low cost cameras capturing me from different angles. By scanning some extreme facial expressions, most mouth movements and emotions can also be simulated by merging between them. Right now, we can capture ourselves as we are today. You know, perhaps there are people in our lives are going to get older and the next generation wont see them anymore. Can i capture grandma and grandpa . Can i capture enough of what they look like, how they move, even what they think, to a certain extent . Can we combine that with Artificial Intelligence where it would be possible to have an interaction with a person who is not alive anymore . Here in the uk, the forever project is also working on a similar idea at the National Holocaust centre and museum, virtually preserving survivor experiences. But a digital legacy isntjust for people like these. Most of us will leave a will regarding our possessions or instructions for our funeral arrangements, but now emphasis is also being placed on our digital footprint too. I spoke to facebooks head of global policy, monika bickert, about our post mortem account options. This is such an incredibly sensitive subject that for facebook, i would imagine is an Impossible Task to get right. Its certainly a very difficult area for us. Losing people is so hard and at facebook, we want to make sure that we are respecting that persons life and respecting the choices that person made, but we also want to make sure were making this process as easy as possible for the family members that are going through it, and actually, its sometimes hard for us to satisfy both of those. So id imagine a lot of people do not tell you, facebook, what they want to happen to their accounts after their death, so how do you know what to do . Thats right, a lot of people dont. I want to be clear that there is a way to tell facebook what you would like to happen to your account after you pass away. We call it our legacy contact. You can actually designate someone who can look after your account basically, this gives the person you can choose what authority you want the person to have but this gives the person the choice to, say, change your Profile Photo or add friends or put a post at the top of your profile. They do not become you, they cannot control every feature of the account. They can take some actions, they can choose to delete the account, but they do not have the ultimate control to look at your private messages. Family and friends have particular feelings about what happens to someones memories when theyre gone. They dont always agree. How do you even begin to settle those disputes . We will delete the profile if one person asks for it. Now, having gone through this myself i lost my husband a little more than a year ago and my experience was that it was very powerful for me and very comforting for me to be able to look at things that he had written, to see photos that he had posted. It made me feel like i could still connect with him and that he still was a very active presence in my life. I wonder whether you had any advice to people watching this on how to go forward if they experience something similar . I think the important thing is have the conversations now and talk about how you would want to treat your digital legacy, including what do you want to happen to your online presence, your facebook account, your other accounts, and what is your plan for making sure that your estate, all the practical things that we dont like to think about very much in our daily lives are taken care of so your loved ones dont have to go through that. Welcome to the week in tech. It was the week that the head of microsoft, satya nadella, said the world is running out of computing capacity and that quantum is the only way forward. A new degree in flying car engineering was announced at an e Learning School in Silicon Valley. And facebook invented a new unit of time called a flick. Its designed to help video editors and people working in visual effects. The new unit lasts longer than a nanosecond but is shorter than a microsecond. And sky decided to take on the likes of amazon and netflix, launching its new now tv stick. Its also announced its goodbye to the old Sky Satellite dishes as all its services go online from 2019. Also this week, General Motors became the first self driving car manufacturer to be sued over an accident. Its Chevrolet Bolt hit a motorcyclist back in december. Meanwhile, tesla had its own autopilot problems when a model s ploughed into a fire truck. The race to put the first privately funded spacecraft on the moon is over, and not with a rocket launch but a tweet and a statement. The google lunar xprize offered a 20 million prize fund for the first team to land on the moon by march. And finally, a robot working in a supermarket has been fired after just one week for scaring customers away. Fabio was an experiment to see if robots would interact well with shoppers, but it turns out its instructions, such as the beer is in the alcohol aisle infuriated people rather than helping them. The job markets tough out there unexpected item in bagging area. Oh, a familiar phrase, but, as weve seen this week, one that we may not need to hear much longer. Amazon gos cashier less seattle store finally launched on monday. You can check in with your phone, cameras and sensors will track what you pick up and your amazon account will be instantly charged. They arent the only big players trying to cut supermarket queues, though. Big Companies Like imb and accenture have been trying to crack the cashier less supermarket model for some time. Well, its time for a rather unconventional shopping experience. The first thing im going to do is get my bag out. I visited this north london Convenience Store, where ibm have been putting their prototype instant check out to the test. Because when it comes to actually checking out, the rf id tags that sit on all the products will be instantly scanned in one go, you can just put everything in here straightaway, although it does sort of feel wrong. And something sweet. So i have everything i need in my shopping bag, but i cant leave just yet. In fact, this is the fun bit. Its time for the instant check out. I pop down my bag full of items and immediately whats in that bag seamlessly comes up on the screen. If youre concerned this could make things too easy for shoplifters, though, because obviously it does look like youve legitimately paid, then fear not. There is something to overcome that. Rf id readers can be placed right by the doors, so if anybody does try to leave with something that hasnt been scanned, the alarm will go off. For customers who are happy to share their habits and behaviour, Artificial Intelligence will come into play to combine that information with data on their surroundings. Weather and traffic, for a Convenience Store like this, will drastically change what people will come in and buy, how many people come in and when. Being able to use all of those mass volumes of data, do predictable analytics, all of that means we will be able to tell the retailer what to keep in stock and when. And that is a real driver behind all this, to understand our Shopping Habits from the moment we enter a shop until we leave. Accenture has kitted out this milan store, which theyve dubbed the supermarket of the future. It features e ink display price tags and a lot of screens. Hidden behind them are kinect Depth Sensing cameras, collecting data on customers movements and interactions with products. The designers of the space hope that as well as providing insight to the retailer, the Data Collection will better the overall shopping experience. A lot of Information Available regarding food does not appear anywhere when you get into the supermarket, so all of this Data Availability does not show up, so we wanted to give that kind of information back to the customer. But while most of us are still actually engaging with humans, or the self service aisle, it seems the cashier less shop could be coming to a place near you fairly soon. That was lara. Now, weve been looking at various ways to try and extend human life, possibly indefinitely, but the researchers cant do it yet and so, until they can, there are those who are offering to put your life on pause. Marc cieslak has been to arizona to meet the self preservation society. Death and taxes, as the saying goes, are the two things none of us can avoid. What about if there was a workaround for death, some way of extending our physical existence on this planet . Alcor was founded in 1972 in order to preserve people from the point of death, freeze them and then when technology is sufficiently advanced revive them in the future. A process it calls cryonics. This is an interesting infographic on the history of cryonics, which starts actually as far back as 1773, when Benjamin Franklin thought about the future of america and speculated that maybe he could be pickled in a vat of madeira with his best friends to see how the country came out. What goes on in this space here . Obviously this simulates a procedure you would normally perform when somebody dies . Exactly. We have to wait for the legal death to be declared. At that point we move the patient from the bed to the ice bath. Were gonna cover them with ice. And at the same time, even though theyve been called legally dead, were gonna restart all kinds of things. Were gonna use a respirator to recover breathing, we will use this mechanical cpr device and the reason were doing that is that we want to administer a series of different medications to protect the cells. So this is even though the patient themselves is dead at this point . Right. Its very much like when you donate an organ, even though the person has been declared dead that doesnt mean all of the cells are suddenly dead. Patients are effectively pumped full of antifreeze to protect their tissue from the freezing process which comes later. It costs up to 200,000 to preserve a full body and 60,000 if Somebody Just wants their head preserved. So this is our operating room. The patient will be put on this special operating table. Its basically designed to shape the patient for long term storage. We dont want someone at a very low temperature with their arm sticking out. Its very hard to fit into the capsule. This here as well, this is just for heads . So usually well begin on the operating table over there and then we do a neuro separation, a few vertebrae down, and then place the patients cephalon, which is the brain plus the skull, upside down in the neuro ring. Essentially the same process, were going to remove the blood and fluids from the brain and cryo protect them against ice formation. Why would people want their head separated from their body . Im not going to come backjust as a head, im going to get a new body and my view is that, unless i die early in an accident, then maybe im 95, 100 years old if im lucky, my bodys going to be in lousy shape anyway and the whole thing will have to be regenerated. Why go to the extra cost of storing my whole body, which is ten times the volume ofjust my head . The corridors here are lined with photos of people who are already frozen in alcors storage facility. This is the patient care base, where we currently store all of our patients. Currently 152. These are all of your patients . Yes, all of our patients here. Actually about two thirds of them are neuro patients. That means theyre just heads . Yeah. So about half our living members are whole body. We actually have more neuro patients here. This can actually contain four whole body patients. Alcor doesnt have any legal obligation to the people stored here, as they technically donated their bodies to science. What happens if you have a power cut, for instance . Well, we dont need electricity for this. These are passive vessels, theyre just gigantic, very expensive thermos flasks and you dont plug your thermos flask into electricity. We just use the liquid nitrogen, which boils off at 320, to maintain that temperature. Alcor says its a non Profit Making Organisation and that it has 1,150 people signed up for its services, including Silicon Valley billionaire peter thiel. But what motivates ordinary people to shell out up to 200,000 for cryogenic preservation . Back in the uk, Derek Watkinson has signed himself and his family up forjust that via a different outfit called the cryonics institute. I imagine being on my deathbed, dying, and then immediately waking up. If its gonna work, im gonna wake up straightaway, cause the passage of time wont mean anything, because i will be dead. So ill wake up immediately and hopefully ill be able to remember things. My memory will be intact, hopefully. Who i am. Your whole family is going to be preserved as well . Yeah. Luckily my wife and daughter are for the idea and they are signed up members of the institute. But is this all too good to be true . We spoke to a neuroscientist who has serious misgivings about the basic foundations of cryonics. You really cant afford to freeze biological tissue until its been appropriately protected. But unless you take it down to those low temperatures for protection quite quickly, it will continue to decompose. And my problem with the cryonics dream, the Wishful Thinking contracts that are sold, is that they havent resolved that conflict. Theres no evidence that they can get the antifreeze into all those micro nooks and crannies into the brain and satisfactorily protect it. We put this to alcor, who provided a detailed response so is this the ultimate insurance policy then . Yeah, but ive not lost anything. A bit of money. Lots of money. That was marc and thats it from San Francisco for now. Dont forget, theres loads of extra stuff from us on twitter and on facebook too. Thanks for watching and well see you soon. Hello again, good morning. Yesterday, we had some rain for a time, then we saw the cloud thinning. But were going to see the cloud thickening up again, and more rain returning across northern parts of the uk on that weather front. That area of low pressure to the north, though, for a while has been bringing some very windy weather across northern scotland, the winds easing by the morning, and well have mild air all the way from southern parts of the mid atlantic heading our way. This is tropical, maritime air, and it means a lot of cloud. Now, across scotland, therell also be some rain. It wont be as windy by the morning across northern scotland. Therell be some showers here, but rain across central southern scotland, and quite a soggy start probably across northern ireland. And some rain and drizzle over the hills of northern england, where it will be quite gusty in the wind. Generally dry elsewhere across england and wales, mild and cloudy, but still very misty and murky over the hills of wales, and perhaps in the south west, just for a while. For most of us, it will be a cloudy day, that rain still there for central southern scotland. Improving conditions, though, for northern ireland. Still a bit dreary over the hills of england and wales. On the whole, it will be cloudy and breezy, some gusty winds around. Widely, temperatures about 12 degrees, even in the cloud. Get some sunshine to the east of high ground, those temperatures could be even higher. A bit chillier across the far north of scotland north of that weather front there, which is bringing the rain, actually, across scotland. And the weather front takes the rain southwards overnight, and starts to arrive into england and wales on monday. And behind it, we start draw down some colder air, the really mild air getting squeezed away into the near continent. So some changes on the way by monday. This rain could be a little heavy at times, moving southwards across england and wales. In the afternoon, it is more across southern england, and thats where well have the highest temperatures. Eventually, well get some sunshine in wales and the midlands. Sunnier skies further north, in that slightly colder air. The showers in scotland could be wintry over the higher ground, but theres colder air to come later on in the week. Chilly start, though, for tuesday, and maybe some frost around here and there. But some sunshine early, before things tend to cloud over, and its going downhill right at the end of the day, as we start to see some rain coming into the south west, at the same time some rain heading into the north west, as well. And so temperatures are little lower, 6 8 degrees fairly typically. Those two weather systems bringing the rain sweep through overnight, then we draw our air all the way from the north and north west, and that means it will be turning colder. It is also turning very showery, i think, on wednesday. Therell be some strong winds around, as well, and particularly for the northern half of the uk, those showers will be of a wintry flavour. It feels colder with the stronger winds. Goodbye. This is bbc news. Im duncan golestani. Our top stories the Afghan Government blames a taliban linked group said to be backed by pakistan for a Suicide Attack in kabul thats left more than 90 people dead. Paris remains on high alert as water levels continue to rise. The river seine is expected to reach six metres above its usual level. Gunmen attack a nightclub in north east brazil, killing at least 1a people. Local media says rival drugs gangs were involved. And coming up, its childs play a portrait of the danish family thats inspired generations of builders
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