Zoltan Istvan is a futurist and ran in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as a candidate of the Transhumanist Party

My thirties started off in countries ravaged by environmental destruction and dictatorships. Back then, I was a journalist for National Geographic, spending most of my time abroad, even though I still called Los Angeles—my birth city—home. In the 100+ countries I visited, I reported on some harrowing stories: the Killing Fields in Cambodia, the near total…