X-Message-Number: 8838
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #8825 - #8827
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 00:15:15 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

I liked Robin Hellweg-Larsen's personal discussion of his problems in joining
up, and more so his discussion of how others might feel. I'm not sure exactly
where it should go on my list, but I'll work that out.

One major issue Robin raises, though, makes me wonder --- not about Robin
but about how we think about the future. That is, the reliance of science
fiction. One of most outstanding features of most science fiction, as I see
it, consists of people who have values and traits very much like our own
but face a very different situation. 

Certainly --- it's guaranteed, that not only our technology but our values
are going to change. Frankly I think that they will change in ways which
will surprise everyone on Cryonet (me, too!), not in any negative way but
by being DIFFERENT. Different from anything we've seen in the past or 
envisioned for the future. Recently I was looking through some libertarian
material --- a set of beliefs for which I have lots of sympathy. Just what
the Net will do to us has hardly yet been adequately explored: one thing is
that it may provide a variety of "government" never seen before. And the
Net is presently in its very early days. ALL PRESENT POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES
are going to look as outmoded as the ideas of the Middle Ages. Just give
it a few hundred years.

(And yes, I mean hundreds of years. People do not change fundamentally 
nearly so quickly. But we'll know they have after a few hundred years).
And I'd say the same of religious philosophies, etc. Whether the Christians
of today would think that the Christians of 2197 were Christians at all is
an interesting issue. Even our sciences will change: at a minimum, the 
boundaries between one science and another will have shifted a lot. Just
what questions researchers will be looking at remains quite open.

Life extension will change us --- I think very much for the better, in some
ways. Just how we'll play out our lives if parents and grandparents and
children all (after a brief period of growing up) look much the same age,
that is fascinating. Age alone will mean very little --- including great
age. Students (if students ever come together in person or on the net) will
differ widely in age though studying the same thing. If they have teachers,
the teachers will not be easy to tell from the students.

It's interesting to look at old science fiction, say that written in the 
19th Century. Yes, they had air travel. In dirigibles. Women, of course,
wore much the same clothing and had much the same roles as in the 19th
Century. (Just what will happen to ALL our roles in the future, when each
of us may go through many roles in succession, not in any special order?).
One of the more amusing facts is that these stories usually had the people
of the 21st Century wearing clothing very like that of the 19th. For that
matter, many political issues of the 19th Century remained as those of the
21st (in such science fiction). 

Two books I've read deserve a look, to set today's science fiction into
perspective. One is WHG Armytage, YESTERDAY'S TOMORROWS. The other is 
JJ Corn (ed) IMAGINING TOMORROW. Yes, in a few ways they got some things
right, but oh! the number of things they got wrong. The books give us a 
fascinating lesson in just how wrong our present ideas of the future may
be. 

As for someone who meets cryonicists and decides that they aren't very
likeable, I would have this to say: it's very unlikely that all human  
beings will take on that cast of mind. If you think some things are important
you're not alone, and they will continue to exist --- though not in the form
you are used to. Even 200 years or 300 years will not be enough to change
human beings so much that you won't find friends and others you are happy
with. What SOME people DO may be very different, but then you don't have
to be like them, and many people will not be like them.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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