By Andrew Haynes Creative
“The Wake” is a quick minute and forty-seven-second thought piece that drives home the shock that will be inherent in a cryogenic rebirth. I thought the CGI work could have been much better in this short, but I still dig the piece. There are only four companies in the world that offer cryopreservation, one in Russia and three in the United States. The cost ranges anywhere from $28,000 thousand upwards to the $200,000 range with no guarantee that reanimation is possible. You see, cryonics is counting on future advancements in medicine to make revival possible. Many people pay for the procedure using the proceeds from life insurance policies in hopes of a rebirth in the distant future.
I don’t believe I would choose this path as the technology is just not at a point where there would be any hope of pulling a Lazarus and showing up at the company picnic fifty years after declared legally dead. There is a current line of thought we should strive for downloading cryopreserved streams of consciousness, or personalities, into robotic hosts when the possibility exists. Some scientists believe the ultimate goal needs to be digital reincarnation. If that were possible, I would sign on the dotted in a heartbeat. A digital resurrection sounds far better than clunking around in a several-hundred-year-old body in a streamlined high-tech futuristic society.
If digital mind uploading becomes possible, I hope it’s an option for people with a terminal illness or disability, or made available to the elderly after reaching a certain age. I would be against scrapping the organic body before its expiration date to go digital at anything under sixty years old. Revel in your true organic nature.
As Hunter S. Thompson once said:
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”
What are your thoughts on the subject? Would you go for revival in your current body some sunny day? Or, do you believe pure digital is the way to go? Or, perhaps some middle road?
Coffee talk…