For Sonia Arrison, longer living through science is inevitable,
so we might as well prepare for it
By Julia Prodis Sulek
 Photo by Patrick Tehan Sonia Arrison landed one of her first jobs at a Canadian foundation by properly answering a question to name her favorite magazines: The Economist. Foreign Affairs. Atlantic Monthly. Her same cerebral interests would land her a job at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, where she wrote scholarly essays about Internet taxes, intellectual property and e-waste.
But it was a brain-candy TV show – “Extreme Makeover,” about tummy tucks, dental veneers and butt lifts – that set her on a new course. She was watching one episode in particular, she remembers, when a man and a woman each had radical head-to-toe surgeries that changed their appearances dramatically.
“There was a moment when they were recovering in a room after surgery, and the guy just starts crying. She says, ‘I can actually change my life,”’ Arrison recalls. “I became fascinated with how people can change the way they look and the way they feel through using science and technology.”
But this is not a story about a woman who becomes a plastic surgeon or a nip-and-tuck patient. No. No. Arrison became something else entirely.
A transhumanist. Like many in the movement taking hold in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, she believes in the futuristic philosophy, which maintains that with the help of science, people can transcend the human limitations of aging and illness. A Fountain of Youth, of sorts, with a technology twist.
“I realized it might be possible to change ourselves internally rather than just outwardly,” she says. As she focused in on bio- and nanotechnologies and became part of Silicon Valley’s inner sanctum of thought leaders, “a brand-new world opened.”
Arrison is 38 years old. She wants to live to be 150 — at least— and believes breakthroughs in science and technology can make it happen. Call it “radical longevity.”
Living well past the century mark is not only possible, she says, if the right people make it a priority, it’s practically inevitable.
In 1850, life expectancy was 43. It’s almost 80 now. With exponential advancements in medicine and genetics, is it so hard to imagine that 150 is that far off? We might as well prepare for it, Arrison says, culturally, politically and economically.
‘We will never be immortal, but we can certainly live longer than we expect, and we should fight for that.’
Sonia says …
She has just written a book intended to help move the conversation out of science fiction novels and into the mainstream. It’s called “100 Plus: How the coming age of longevity will change everything from careers and relationships to family and faith” (due out from Basic Books in August).
Motherhood starting at 70. Sunset clauses on marriage. (Would you really want to be married to the same person for 100 years?) It’s all in there.
Let’s just say she’s a hit at dinner parties.
“I want to be able to live as long and as healthy as I can,” she says. “I feel there’s so much out there to discover, and there really isn’t enough time to discover it all. I don’t wish to end the journey, the exciting journey that’s life.”
Easy for her to say.
She’s young and beautiful with an adorable toddler son and a husband with Google millions and homes in Atherton and San Francisco. (Husband Aydin Senkut was an early Google employee who was named by Businessweek as one of the top 20 tech angels in 2010.) Who wouldn’t want to live forever — or 150 years, anyway?
But as Arrison makes clear, these are not simply the musings of the idle rich.
Discussing ideas that change the world, no matter how far out, are the kinds of conversations that surround Arrison. She is part of an inner circle of Silicon Valley’s high-tech elite that have the money and the curiosity to explore the fringe. It includes Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and Facebook investor featured in “The Social Network” and on the cover of Forbes Magazine; Google co-founder Larry Page; and Rapleaf CEO and angel investor Auren Hoffman.
Arrison serves on an advisory board of the transhumanist organization Humanity Plus with Patri Friedman, who is the grandson of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and director of a Thiel-funded project to build and inhabit floating sea colonies.
And she’s an early investor and trustee at Singularity University in Mountain View, an incubator of ideas intended to solve the planet’s “grand challenges,” according to its mission statement. Mountain View-based Singularity is led by futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of the bestselling “The Singularity Is Near,” about extending life and transcending biology.
“Sonia is sort of like this general who is helping us marshal the forces of humanity to defeat its greatest enemy — her name is death,” Thiel says. He means it. As he puts it, “I’d much rather live to 150 and not be a billionaire than be a billionaire and die at 80.”
Arrison was an easy fit into this industrious group. Even in her late 20s, she knew how to make an impression.
The first time she met Thiel, she was running the technology program at the Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank, writing about consumer technology issues. She approached him after he delivered a speech in 2001 about “the ungovernability of America and the crisis of our constitutional system.” Thiel considered himself libertarian-leaning, but Arrison didn’t think his solution made sense from that perspective.
“I think you’re completely wrong,” she told him. “If you want to know why, here’s my card.”
Startled, he took her card. She walked away, and the next day, he sent her an e-mail. “I want to know why I’m wrong,” he wrote. “Meet me for dinner.”
They’ve been close friends ever since. His foundation has funded programs at Singularity University. He wrote the forward to her new book.
The longevity movement, however, is certainly not without its skeptics. Critics forecast a more stratified society of the wealthy who can afford life-lengthening technology and the poor who can’t. And won’t “messing with nature” cause all sorts of problems?
But as Thiel says, “We don’t want to become aliens or computers or something not human. Sonia is a voice of reason, a clarion call arguing that we should become more human, more like ourselves.”
S. Jay Olshanksy, professor of public health at the University of Illinois-Chicago who is an expert in aging and longevity issues, says he’s thrilled Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are turning their attention to the possibilities of slowing down the aging process.
But living to 150? While longevity nearly doubled over the past century-and-a-half, he says, most gains came in saving the young. Advances have slowed tremendously in recent decades for lack of cures and therapies for aging adults.
“We’re coming up against a barrier of aging itself,” he says. “In the absence of modifying that barrier, we’re not going to get 150-year lifespans. We’re not even going to get 130-year lifespans. Even with 122 as the record, the vast majority of us aren’t going to make it to 100.”
But Arrison is optimistic the barrier will be broken. Research is under way to explore whether the kind of genes that have proven to double the lifespan of tiny worms can have a similar effect on humans. Tissue technology, or growing human organs to replace defectives ones, also will lead to longer lives, she says. Using a person’s own stem cells, new bladders and windpipes already have been grown and implanted.
“Think about vintage cars that still survive today in mint condition,” she says. “It’s not because the car itself was made to last. Vintage cars survive because every time a part fails, it is replaced. With a large enough parts list, a human could be maintained in tip-top condition for a much longer period of time, because parts will be replaced as they wear out.”
Arrison might have a personal advantage when it comes to longevity.
She comes from good stock. When her grandfather visited from Canada over Christmas, he pulled off this one-liner while gingerly walking down the staircase: “I think I’m starting to get old!” He’s 98.
She was born in a small town in Alberta, Canada, the daughter of scientists and granddaughter of political mavericks. Her mother is a pharmacist, her father a chemical engineer who works on clean coal and cold fusion. Her grandparents helped start the populist Reform Party, which gave rise to Canada’s current prime minister.
Arrison co-authored her first book, about Canadian politics, at 22. While a grad student studying political science at the University of British Columbia in the mid-1990s, she gravitated to the World Wide Web: “I was the only political science student hanging out with the computer science geeks.”
It’s a combination that has served her well, from her jobs at foundations and think tanks and writing columns for TechNewsWorld, to a volunteer position with the conservative Silicon Valley group called “Lead21,” which introduced tech entrepreneurs to the powers in Washington, D.C.
That’s where she met her husband, who had recently retired from Google. Lead21 founder Auren Hoffman introduced them during a function in the nation’s capital. Arrison and Senkut were standing outside when U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton walked by, but unlike the rest of the crowd, neither of them paid attention.
“We were having this focused conversation,” she says. “Even Hillary Clinton couldn’t pull us away from each other.”
They were inseparable after that. He proposed six months later. She was 32. He was 37.
“They’re a great match,” Hoffman says. “They both have very different backgrounds, yet are very sympatico. She’s got an incredible laugh. She puts people at ease. While she has strong opinions, she’s one who will assess information and often change her mind about things. That makes a person a very exciting person to talk to.”
Take this excerpt from a 2004 column she wrote in TechNewsWorld: With some 15,000 people dying globally every day, she wrote, “It does seem rather odd that we aren’t demanding a solution now. Perhaps one reason is that we live in a culture of death – a culture that has convinced us that death is natural, good, and impossible to fight against, so we shouldn’t even try.”
But Arrison is trying.
“We will never be immortal,” she says, “but we can certainly live longer than we expect, and we should fight for that.’’ Anything less, she said, would be “tragic.”
So what if she does live to be 150? How might she spend even the last 20 years of it?
“Learning, exploring and working to contribute something positive to society. Perhaps by then,” she says, “I can take my great-great-grandchildren to a resort in space.” |
 Sonia Arrison at a recent event at Singularity University in Mountain View. She is an early investor and trustee at Singularity, which brings together leaders in advancing technologies to consider some of the planet's most pressing challenges. Courtesy of Singularity University  At a Singularity reception at Arrison's home, from left, Laurie Yoler, Michelle Beauchamp and Arrison. Courtesy of Singularity University  At the TED conference in Long Beach earlier this year, Arrison caught up with scientist and author Astro Teller, currently Google's director of new projects. Courtesy of Daniel Kraft Sonia says …
Book on your nightstand?
This changes on a weekly basis. Right now it is “The Social Animal” by David Brooks.
Greatest indulgence?
Dark chocolate.
What did you wear to the opening of the San Francisco Opera?
A gun-metal gray Prada dress, black and pewter Monique Lhuillier jacket, and black Sergio Rossi platforms.
What do you admire most in a person?
The combination of intelligence and kindness.
Who is your role model and why?
My grandmother. She was always engaged in society in productive ways. She was a schoolteacher for special needs children, a mother of four and a volunteer to too many causes to list. When she “retired,” she didn’t stop working; she just did it for less income. She was an extremely positive female role model – the whole family leaned on her for wisdom and advice.
Favorite local restaurant?
On the Peninsula, the Village Pub and Bistro Elan.
Favorite designer?
I love the simple, timeless elegance of Prada for dresses and classic appeal of Salvatore Ferragamo for shoes and bags.
Favorite single item in your closet?
A blue plaid raincoat by Burberry.
What if you didn’t make it to 150 and died at say, 85 or 90?
It would be the same disappointment when you find out your friend who is 42 has cancer and dies. It’s tragic when anyone dies regardless of their age. But it would be terribly disappointing. |
