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Postscript
(Footnotes are ‘local’, within this section.)
This story reflects 40+ years of involvement in cryonics1,
as well as 12+ years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a Senior Engineer
and Member of the Technical Staff, with both technical and management
responsibilities on interplanetary spacecraft and Earth orbital projects.
Co-founding (with my partner, Linda Chamberlain) of the Alcor
Society for Solid State Hypothermia in 1972 and suspension of FRC-Jr.2
(my father) in 1976 were followed by development of a
‘LifePact’3
concept in the late 1980’s, and the cryonic
suspension of Linda’s mother by Alcor in 1990. More recently, mindclone
emulations to serve as patient advocates seemed plausible4, and
set the stage for a high degree of current involvement with the Terasem
Movements.
BioQuagmire draws heavily upon my thinking in the late 1980’s, as expressed
in short stories contributed to LifeQuest 5,6.
Chapters 27-35 reflect Ray Kurzweil’s7,8
and Dr. Martine Rothblatt’s9 ideas. The
Terasem Journals10 and Martine’s Mindclones
blog11 provided much additional
inspiration. Project work in developing podcasts12
on “The Truths of Terasem” contributed greatly also.
Technologies for chatbots and higher AI are expanding so rapidly it is
difficult to keep up. One source of updating is so valuable that it must be
mentioned and recommended:
KurzweilAI.net [newsletter@kurzweilai.net]
Ray
Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity is Near and “The Truths of
Terasem”12, voice forecasts besides which stories like
BioQuagmire seem tame.
Compression of subjective time before the end of this
century, without over-stretching Moore’s law, suggests that one year of real
time could then seem like 10,000 or more.
Expectations of what the future may hold now embrace an awesome spectrum.
Many fear global warming, third world starvation and nuclear war will cause
civilization’s downfall. Others are concerned that careless development of
nanotechnology will melt down the surface of the Earth. There are fears
that rogue cyberbeings will turn against humankind.
The
public in general is skeptical about even so mild an idea that biological
aging will be conquered. An infinitesimal number think cryonics can be made
to work. In other quarters, plausible visions are proposed that personal
cyberconsciousness will be a reality in less than thirty years. Some expect
humans to discard their biological bodies a few decades later.
BioQuagmire straddles these extremes. Some may see it as mindlessly
far-reaching. Others may think its assumptions are absurdly conservative.
Hopefully you will feel it addresses the middle ground.
I encouraged you to maintain total open-mindedness as to
future developments. At the same time, it is well to remember that there
are always engineering limitations in what science suggests is feasible;
that these will always impose limits on what may be achieved, at any given
time.
Thank you
for visiting BioQuagmire. May you travel far in space and time!
Boundless
Life,
Fred
Chamberlain (2011)
Postscript Footnotes
1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_and_Linda_Chamberlain
2)
http://www.lifepact.com/frcjr.htm
3)
http://www.lifepact.com/lifepact.htm
4)
http://www.lifepact.com/cybertwins.htm
5)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_and_Linda_Chamberlain
6)
http://www.lifepact.com/lifequestindex.htm
7)
The Age
of Spiritual Machines
8)
The Singularity is Near
9)
From
Transgender to Transhuman
10)
http://www.terasemjournals.org/index.html
11)
http://mindclones.blogspot.com/
12)
http://truthsofterasem.wordpress.com/
BioQuagmire expects to have
an ongoing life. The story will stay as it is, but references and links to
details will evolve. Other blogs may develop concerning BioQuagmire, but
they all will be linked from that URL. See you around, either here in
biospace, as we tend to think of it as “organics”, or in cyberspace, as soon
that is accessible, with the view that before the end of the century, we’ll
all be there.
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