X-Message-Number: 33295 Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:42:09 -0700 Subject: When does that other 21st Century start? From: MARK PLUS <> I sympathize with Peter Thiel's desire* to hit a metaphorical "reset button" which takes us back to the science-fictional visions of the 1950's and 1960's, so that we can try to make more of them real this time. What happened to that other 21st Century I read about as a youngster? You know, the one where by the year 2011 we'd normally wear unitards or jumpsuits (preferably with advanced technologies embedded in them to protect us from death by misadventure, as FM-2030 writes about in "Countdown to Immortality"); the one with the moon and L-5 colonies; the one with the cities covered by geodesic domes; the one with hypersonic jet travel; the one where we'd have 150 year life expectancies (despite the confusion that idea reflects, given that we define life expectancy retrospectively from population statistics); the one with advanced and nearly reversible cryotransport; the one where people wouldn't have to flee from countries experiencing Malthusian social breakdowns; etc. * http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0214/features-peter-thiel-social-media-life-after-facebook.html -- Mark Plus Life is short: Freeze hard! Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33295