From
Wikipedia derived from the
Cakkavatti Sutta:
"Buddhism believes in cycles in which life span of human beings changes according to human nature. In Cakkavati sutta the Buddha explained the relationship between life span of human being and behaviour. As per this sutta, In the past unskillful behavior was unknown among the human race. As a result, people lived for an immensely long time — 80,000 years — endowed with great beauty, wealth, pleasure, and strength. Over the course of time, though, they began behaving in various unskillful ways. This caused the human life span gradually to shorten, to the point where it now stands at 100 years, with human beauty, wealth, pleasure, and strength decreasing proportionately. In the future, as morality continues to degenerate, human life will continue to shorten to the point were the normal life span is 10 years, with people reaching sexual maturity at five.
Ultimately, conditions will deteriorate to the point of a "sword-interval," in which swords appear in the hands of all human beings, and they hunt one another like game. A few people, however, will take shelter in the wilderness to escape the carnage, and when the slaughter is over, they will come out of hiding and resolve to take up a life of skillful and virtuous action again. With the recovery of virtue, the human life span will gradually increase again until it reaches 80,000 years, with people attaining sexual maturity at 500."
The quote above isn't really relevant to meditation, but I have wondered how it could be possible for beings on the human plane to live for such absurd lengths of time. I don't think a digital existence, meaning human mind software running on more stable hardware, is inherently bad. We are cruising for extinction unless we implement population controls, colonization of the solar system, digital minds, and/or successful insight meditation by a large chunk of the population*, and if we disappear, Shakyamuni's dharma disappears [from the human realm] with us.
*I believe this would lead to open interaction with devas as semi-equals; this wouldn't automatically solve any of our problems, except humans would view devas as the quintessential other instead of humans belonging to a different race/nation/creed, with various consequences.
