X-Message-Number: 29215
References: <>
From: Kennita Watson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #29209 - #29213
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 02:56:43 -0800

On Mar 2, 2007, at 2:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:

> At Mark Plus' blog, we see an example of how futurism
> hype has started to create a backlash.
> http://transsurvivalist.blogspot.com/
>
> From his blog:
>
> ///////////////////////////////////////
> How sad. Nobody takes Buckminster Fuller, Gerard K.
> O'Neill and other futuristic visionaries active in the
> 1970's seriously these days, though a current crop of
> people with similar agendas have recycled some of
> their ideas. We don't have that cybernated leisure
> society, radical life extension, space colonization,
> widespread psychedelic expansion of human
> consciousness and other dreams set in the early 21st
> Century that my teenaged reading in the 1970's led me
> to expect by now.
> /////////////////////////////////
>
>
> I can validate mark's feelings. In many ways we have
> lost ground here in America over the last 30 years.
>
> Altough food staples are quite cheap, medical care is
> much more expensive.
>
> And leisure time is actually less available here in
> America than it used to be.
>
> And most of the gee whiz future seems to be farther
> and farther away.
>
> I wonder whether this backlash will spread, and if so
> whether it will affect cryonics membership.

I don't know as it's a backlash so much as depression
brought on by disappointment.

There is no way I'd go back to the 1970s.  I love the
21st Century, even if it doesn't have a lot of what we
hoped for.

I think a sense that things are moving along slowly
would tend to *increase* cryonics membership, because
people might think "Dang, it's not going to get here
soon enough; I'd better be able to wait it out.".
Depression and hopelessness ("It will *never* happen")
is the problem, not optimistic scenarios of the future.
The depression may have to do with people's short
attention spans and memories.  Murphy says "Everything
will take longer than you expect."  Live with it.  We
got the timelines wrong -- oh well.  Sometimes we get
them wrong the other way, like with computers beating
humans at chess, and cracking the genome.

All we can do is keep beating the optimism drum, and
try to stop laws that get in the optimists' way (like
banning stem cell research).

I've spent way too long on this already; feel free to
leap on any holes I left in it.

Live long and prosper,
Kennita

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