X-Message-Number: 1749
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 12:55:10 EST
From: 
Subject: CRYONICS Madison Avenue

A few totally subjective comments on msg #1734 - Madison Avenue Meets
Cryonics:

I very much agree that a more appealing name could be chosen.  Purely
on the basis of visceral appeal, "TransTime" sounds like a better name
than almost all of the other names in cryonics.  My personal reaction
is that it invokes images from time travel SF rather than those of
cryonics SF, and the former are generally more positive images.

Since images of speed appeal to many people (notably the Macho market??)
perhaps some analogy to relativistic time dilation would be appealing?
"With a subjective time of 10 minutes to the year 2100...you would
 need to move at 99.9999% of c to get there any faster..."
An analogy to a 4-d ambulance has the disadvantage of bringing in images
of illness and disaster, but perhaps some variation could be used...

>  My suggestion, and you may disagree, is that the "root meme" for
>  cryonics is "outrage against death, with a grim determination to
>  defeat it by one's own hand".  What?  That doesn't sound simple!
>  Look at how many words it took to describe it!  True, but what
>  image does it evoke?  Imagine a person, thousands of years ago,
>  standing next to a fallen friend, shaking his fist in rage at the
>  Gods, determined to defeat their ugly game.  Picture Gilgamesh
>  travelling throughout the known world in search of a way to conquer
>  death.  That is the sort of primal image that drives us.  And
>  cryonics is, for now, our best resolution for it.

While I have a somewhat different, albeit closely related, view, those
who share Kevin's view of the "root meme" might want to find copies of
Leslie Fish's "Cthulu Gone" and "The Immortality Stomp", which I think
they will find enjoyable (the latter might be interpreted as parody, but
then again, it might not).
                                              -Jeffrey Soreff
standard disclaimer: I do not speak for my employer.

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