X-Message-Number: 30631 From: Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:30:46 EDT Subject: Clark dead...unfrozen...a PR coup missed, a visionary lacks v... In a message dated 3/19/2008 5:01:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time, writes: Message #30626 From: Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:50:31 EDT Subject: arthur clarke Kaput at 90. Helps you appreciate how hard a sell cryonics is. Clarke wasn't against it--he just wasn't very interested. What he told me, some years back, was that, since we become different people every ten years or so anyway, it doesn't matter much. The less charitable will say he suffered from that failure of imagination that he talked about. More road kill. R.E. (End copying of Ettinger post, Rudi now writing.) Arthur C. Clarke utilized the concept of cryonic suspension in many of his books. And was aware of the reality of Alcor and the Cryonics Institute. It is heartbreaking to see a visionary writer...yet another one after Carl Sagan... die without the precious pattern of his unique brain preserved via cryonics. I am genuinely saddened, few individuals have had the impact with their ideas and books that Clarke had. I still remember the huge scope of his vision in "The City and the Stars," and "Childhood's End", and other books that considered a very interesting and generally positive future. I had written Clarke some years ago, even trying to broker a "cost free" suspension for him and a few other thought leaders for the incredible publicity value...but to no avail. I had read that he thought "people should die and make room for the next generation" or some such nonsense. Especially annoying was that I read "Clarke had some of his DNA sent into space." So what? Is it a failure of imagination, as Robert Ettinger points out? Or, is it possibly a failure in the way that cryonics is generally presented? It is an axiom in the marketing business that "Failure to hit the target is...never the fault of the target." Somehow the DRAMA, the EXCITEMENT, of the ONLY real world possible time machine to the future...cryonics...is not translating to most of the mass mind and media. According to multiple studies of decision making, people tend to make decisions emotionally and then justify them rationally. Most of us in cryonics intentionally shy away from the emotionally driven "hype machine" that is behind most mass movements. Whether it is Nike athletic wear, the Christian church, CocaCola, or Scientology, there is a marketing machine backed by clever memetic engineers who create a desire. As Ettinger and many others have pointed out, cryonics is indeed a "hard sell." My small contribution to this conundrum is the book I am writing...have been working on for about seven years...called "The Affordable Immortal: How You Can Fund the New Science of Biostasis." I hope to have this published by May. I have an estate planning attorney collaborating on the cryonics estate planning and wealth preservation topics and chapters. And the early part of the book is about a surprisingly interesting idea called "Life Insurance." And how the industry and products have evolved to generate the astonishingly cost effective and affordable programs available to us today. But the real meat of the book is about the IDEOLOGY and PHILOSOPHY and REASONABLENESS of the cryonics experiment. Done in the form of dialogues with a software engineer considering signing up for cryonics, the heart of the book is about the "Why" as much of the "How" of cryonics. While I could be wrong, I really think this is pretty interesting material. Because the people reading this bulletin board are among the thought leaders in the still nascent cryonics movement, I may be emailing some of you individually to get your take on the book as it develops. I have no delusions about this book being the next "Harry Potter." People are clearly much more interested in reading about a fictional young wizard based fantasy than reading about how they can preserve and potentially extend their lives. Obviously, Harry's experience at Hogwarts is more important to the mass mind than figuring out how to see in the year 3000 AD. (BTW, I don't hate the Harry Potter series...our dogs are named Hermione, MacGonigal, and Harry Potter!). But I am continually dismayed at the lack of fascination on the part of the American public with real science and technology. In closing, we as a (mostly virtual) community need to continue to work on getting a highly influential thought leader to publicly sign up and promote the idea of cryonics. Could we develop a thread where we dream and speculate who might be good in this role? I will personally commit to writing them with the proposal, if we can come up with the right match. Warm Regards from Florida, For Centuries, Rudi Rudi Richard Hoffman CFP CLU ChFC Board Member Financial Planning Association fpafla.com Board Member Salvation Army salvationarmy.org Member Alcor Life Extension Foundation alcor.org Certified Financial Planner(TM) CFP Board of Standards Member Libertarian Party libertarianparty.org Member National Rifle Association nra.org Member World Transhumanist Association http://transhumanism.org/ World's Leading Cryonics Insurance Provider rudihoffman.com **************Create a Home Theater Like the Pros. Watch the video on AOL Home. (http://home.aol.com/diy/home-improvement-eric-stromer?video=15?ncid=aolhom00030000000001) Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=30631