X-Message-Number: 45
From att!sun!pyramid!munnari!attila.esa.oz.au!pete Mon Dec 12 07:35:39 1988
Received: by att.ATT.COM (smail2.6 - att-ih)
	id AA19631; 12 Dec 88 07:35:39 CST (Mon)
Received: from pyramid.UUCP by sun.Sun.COM (4.0/SMI-4.0)
	id AA16653; Mon, 12 Dec 88 05:19:04 PST
Received: by pyramid.pyramid.com (5.51/OSx4.4-880707)
	id AA15013; Mon, 12 Dec 88 04:53:00 PST
Received: from attila.esa.oz (via basser) by munnari.oz with SunIII (5.5)
	id AA16693; Mon, 12 Dec 88 23:38:24 EST
	(from  for ho4cad!kqb)
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 88 18:35:02 AES
From: sun!munnari!attila.oz.au!pete (Peter Merel)
Message-Id: <>
To: munnari!ho4cad!kqb
Subject: CRYONICS - unloading.
Cc: pyramid!pete
Status: R

Joe Blow has the same response to uploading that he has to death - he
doesn't have any control over it, is not sure what it will mean to him, and
if its all the same to you he'd rather be mowing the lawn. This is hardly 
surprising. Joe Blow is essentially incurious and hostile to change. Uploading
might just make a marketable alternative to death, but it won't appeal to
Joe Blow if he has even the slimmest chance at a decent meat life.

I think Alan Lovejoy is quite right about the aesthetic undesirability of
'machines'. However I don't believe that an increase in their functionality,
through nano-engineering or other technologies, will make uploaded existance
any more palatable to Joe Blow; more likely scare the bejeesus out of him.
There are still plenty of folks out there with a real distaste for recreative 
sex, and plenty of legislators among them. So what chance does recreative death
have? 

Uploading/revivification might meet more than simple consumer resistance.

Consider: If uploading or successful revival of suspenders became reality, would
the church approve? How many popular religions allow man to suck his soul back
from the powers that are supposed to provide for it? For that matter, how many 
governments are willing to permit their people immortality? What kind of
legal system could cope with it?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For answers to these and other troubling questions, I've got a few more SF
femto-reviews:

"Blood Music" - Greg Bear. Microbiologist engineers "intelligent virus" which
transforms all flesh into something totally other... Sort of a retro-fitted
"Childhood's End".

"Time Pressure" - Spider Robinson. Related to his other books. Uploading 
time-travelling utopia. But good.

"Between the Strokes of Night" - Charles Sheffield. Suspension slows but does 
not stop thought. Slowed experience of physical phenomena effects different
"space" co-resident with normal space.

"The Call of Cthulhu", "The Whisperer in Darkness", sundry others - 
H.P. Lovecraft. Horror stories written in the 1920s. Quote: "That is not
dead which can eternal lie; and with strange aeons even death may die." An
acquired taste.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


All opinions portrayed are fictitious.    --    (pete%)

OR        OR    {uunet,mcvax,ukc,nttlab}!munnari!attila.oz!pete

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=45