Image of extropianism and transhumanism

boogie woogie (extrogod@hotmail.com)
Thu, 06 Aug 1998 12:16:29 PDT

In the wonderful rag that circulates in the city of Bahston there was a story portraying cryonicists and probably extropians and transhumanists as geeks with no sex lives. Sure thats an accurate description of me but everybody else too? :-) Heres an part of the article.

>>>Pawing through a magazine profile of Ralph Merkle, a nerdy West Coast
scientist, I noticed a curious biographical detail: Mr. Merkle is one of the few people in the world who have paid to have their bodies cryonically suspended -- frozen -- after death. He hopes that scientists will discover a way to revive human life from frozen tissue before the Apocalypse, or before his yearly payments to Arizona-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation run out.

OK, it's a bet. But more intriguing, Merkle's Web site provides a link to "quite a few people well known in the fields of computer science, software development and other high-tech areas" who've opted for the deep freeze. There are 26 of them and, not surprisingly, they have some things in common:

  1. They are all nerds.
  2. Twenty-five of the 26 are men.
  3. Most of them, with the exception of Cambridge's own Marvin Minsky, live in California.

So here's your first peek at post-Armageddon America: a bunch of cockroaches scurrying around the pant legs of 25 computer and biotech nerds, who are in turn scouring the Santa Cruz Moutains for frozen women to revive and fraternize with. It's a chilling thought.

Interest in cryogenics has been heating up, slowly, since the 1964 publication of Robert Ettinger's book "The Prospect of Immortality." Ettinger now runs the Michigan-based Cryonics Institute, which charges a one-time, $28,000 suspension fee for clients who want to be around for the release of Windows 64. On his Web site (www.cryonics.org) Ettinger plays awful music and boasts of his company's "proven track record," whatever that means.<<<

Is this our image? I checked out the Transvision pictures and I have to confess things are not looking good. It looked like a Revenge of the Nerds reunion. Between geeks and plastic surgery experiments I think we're in trouble!!!!

Boog



Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com