X-Message-Number: 30295
From: Mark Plus <>
Subject: Cryonics meets future fatigue
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:04:25 -0800


I have to wonder if the recent expressions of anxiety about how to run a 
cryonics organization reflect a deeper, unstated fear: That technological 
progress has effectively stagnated or stalled for intrinsic reasons, so that 
nobody will ever have the ability to resuscitate us no matter how many centuries
a cryonics organization can keep pouring liquid nitrogen over our bodies.


For example, cryonicists starting 20 years ago apparently put a lot of stock in 
Eric Drexler's ideas as the technological hocus-pocus to bring us back; but it 
looks now that Drexlerian nanotech has joined the ranks of other paleo-future 
fantasies like space colonies, flying cars and nuclear power too cheap to meter.
The rush to vitrification implicitly acknowledges nanotech's infeasibility.


"Around 2010 the world will be at a new orbit in history. . .  Life expectancy 
will be indefinite. Disease and disability will nonexist. Death wll be rare and 
accidental -- but not permanent. We will continuously jettison our obsolescence 
and grow younger." F.M. Esfandiary, "Up-Wing Priorities" (1981).

Mark Plus

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