X-Message-Number: 10031 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:13:37 -0700 From: Fred Chamberlain <> Subject: Cryonics Motivations and Acceptance of Technologies II From: Fred Chamberlain <> Subject: Cryonics Motivations and Acceptance of Technologies II Date: July 10, 1998 An afterthought: Some of you might feel that it was unduly fanciful for me to suggest that, "his auto-neuropreservation system might handily remove his head and flashfreeze it," but consider how implausible it would have sounded, to anyone one hundred years ago, if we'd said: "Our cars will be able to go much faster than a hundred miles an hour, but if you have a head-on collision, a ballon will jump out at you and try to "float you" past the shock! Heck, there will be laws to *require* it on all new vehicles, at some point!" or "We'll fly three times the speed of sound, but don't worry. If things go wrong, we'll blow you through the roof in a seat propelled by explosives, still wearing an oxygen mask. Then a little bag will pop out and big umbrella will float you to the ground!" They didn't "require life preservers" on the sailing ships which brought the first European settlers to this country, but those people had the courage to try something everyone else probably thought was lunacy, at the time. As they crossed the Atlantic, little could they have envisioned either the Titanic and its fate, or the fact that less than a hundred years later, its "deep-water" abandoned decks would be prowled by automated, swimming cousins of space vehicles, carrying television cameras. The future beckons to us! It has things we cannot begin to imagine! Some of us will try practically *anything* to not "miss the show"! Others will hold back, as much from fear of an unknown future, as from doubt that cryonics may not "work"! In the end, a new kind of non-genetic "natural selection" will have taken place. Future psychologists will be fascinated by it. Fred Chamberlain, President/CEO () Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr., Suite 110, Scottsdale AZ 85260-6916 Phone (602) 922-9013 (800) 367-2228 FAX (602) 922-9027 http://www.alcor.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10031