Google has invested in a new venture called California Life Company (or Calico), with a goal of helping people to live longer—a lot longer. According to Mashable, Calico will specialize in new research and developments that can cause the human body’s cells to wear-down at a much slower pace. The idea is that instead of extending a patient’s elderly years, it would make them younger longer (as this article puts it, “an extra decade of being 30, rather than an extra decade of being 90”). Though Google won’t actually be running Calico (it’s simply providing a sizeable investment in the operation), the mission of the venture isn’t actually a totally new idea for the search engine giant. Ray Kurzweil—an expert in the singularity (combining man with machine) who believes that it is possible to live forever—is currently Google’s director of engineering …
