X-Message-Number: 30776
Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 06:40:43 -0700
From: David Brandt-Erichsen <>
Subject: Re: Great Mambo Disappointments
References: <>

At 02:00 AM 5/27/2008, Mark Plus wrote:

>Message #30770
>From: Mark Plus <>
>Subject: Great Mambo Disappointments
>Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 08:05:08 -0700
>
>Ed Regis back in 1990 published "Great Mambo Chicken and the 
>Transhuman Condition," which amounts to a book-length advertisment 
>for transhumanism with cryonics as an important theme.
>
>Lately Regis has come out against the sort of futurology he profiled 
>in his own book. For example, he wrote an Edge essay earlier this 
>year dismissing efforts to predict the technological future:
>
>http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_2.html#regis
>
>And in 2001 he pointed out the persistent nonarrival of molecular 
>nanotechnology (MNT), despite all the "conferences, books, theories, 
>predictions, discussions, workshops, institutes, companies, 
>scenarios, simulations, pictures, articles, initiatives, meetings, 
>study groups, Web sites, magazines, newsletters, matching grants and 
>unmatching grants, etcetera." Regis concludes that "The one thing we 
>haven't seen is any substantial progress toward MNT."
>
>http://www.nanotech-now.com/ed-regis-interview-122001.htm
>
>I have to wonder now if we have chased after a technological mirage 
>to make cryonics work.
>
>"Around 2010 the world will be at a new orbit in history. . .  Life 
>expectancy will be indefinite. Disease and disability will nonexist. 
>Death wll be rare and accidental -- but not permanent. We will 
>continuously jettison our obsolescence and grow younger." F.M. 
>Esfandiary, "Up-Wing Priorities" (1981).
>
>Mark Plus

I don't think we are chasing a technological mirage -- it's just that 
(as Arthur C. Clarke pointed out) people continuously overestimate 
near-term technological advances and underestimate long-term 
advances.  I agree with what Regis said in the two articles you 
cited.  Personally, I have never estimated that the technology needed 
for revival from the cryopreserved state would take anything less 
than 200 years to develop, and perhaps I am being overly 
optimistic.  Look at a relatively simple idea in genetic engineering: 
using viruses as vectors to insert DNA to cure all sorts of 
conditions.  This idea has been around for about 50 years now, but 
its implementation is still confined to relatively few experimental 
cases and its use in widespread clinical application is still many 
years or even decades in the future.  That doesn't mean the idea is 
not sound -- it's just that the engineering involved is very 
difficult and complicated.  That's even more true for MNT.  I've 
always laughed at the predictions of when MNT would be 
available.  Those predictions were always totally unrealistic, so it 
is no surprise at all that they are not coming true.  That doesn't 
mean the idea is not sound.  Living systems are MNT machines that 
already exist and hence constitute proof that the idea works.

David Brandt-Erichsen 

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