Cryonics Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The debate on the right of choice in cases of euthanasia and cryonics continues unabated. The Court's in USA, UK and India have discussed on these issues but, have not come up with concrete findings on the same. Both these issues involve questions of the choice of life & death. In the case of RE JS Disposal, the judge of the UK High Court (Family Division) has perhaps shown a way out by respecting the choice of a 14 years girl and allowing her body to be cryonically preserved. With regard to euthanasia the options given by the courts are often conflicting. While the choice of active euthanasia has not been accepted but, passive euthanasia has been permitted in Indian Supreme Court in the case of Aruna Shanbaug. As science and technology progresses questions related to euthanasia and cryonics will be raised again and again. There is need for concretization of the policy relating to respecting to choices made by people as to how their bodies ought to be treated during the life and after the death.. In this paper, paradox of truth of death as well as faith in life in the interplay of cryonics and euthanasia in the choices people make and the policies and law State adopts, has been examined, in the light of contemporary developments.

- by and +1
- •
- Comparative Law, Euthanasia, Medical Law and Ethics, Cryonics
- by Bronwyn Parry
- •
- Cryogenics, Philosophy, Science Fiction, Nanotechnology
- by Abou Farman
- •
- STS (Anthropology), Immortality, Cryonics

Vücut kriyoprezervasyonu (cryonics), yasal ölüm ilanı yapılmış insanların geleceğin tıbbi ilerlemelerine eriştirilmesi suretiyle yeniden hayata getirilmelerinin amaçlandığı, deneysel bir tıbbi prosedürdür. Ölüm sonrası süreçte doğal şartlarda ceset üzerinde gözlemlenen postmortem değişimlerin önüne geçilmesi ve cesedin belirsiz bir süre boyunca muhafazasının (hücresel boyutta) sağlanabilmesi için metabolizma aktivitelerinin askıya alınması amacıyla ultra düşük sıcaklıklar (-196 °C) kullanılmaktadır. 1960'lı yılların başındaki ilk çalışmalardan bu yana kriyoprezervasyon uygulaması teorik bir konseptten buz oluşumunu ortadan kaldırmak için acil tıbbi prosedürleri ve modern vitrifikasyon teknolojilerini kullanan, kanıta dayalı bir uygulama haline gelmiştir. Vücut kriyoprezervasyonu prosedürü, dünya genelinde British Columbia eyaleti (Kanada) haricinde hiçbir bölgede hukuken düzenleme altına alınmadığından dolayı, ilgili eyalet dışında genel olarak kanun boşluğu olan bir konudur. Vücut kriyoprezervasyonunu yasaklayan doğrudan bir norm olmadığından dolayı şu ana kadar mahkemelerde dava konusu olan durumlar, mevcut hukuk kurallarına ve suç tiplerine göre değerlendirilerek çözümlenmiştir. Hukuk ve etik biliminin değişen sosyal şartlara göre şekilleneceği göz önüne alındığında zamanla çeşitli düzenlemelerin kanun koyucular tarafından benimsenmesi muhtemeldir. Çalışmada, süreç içerisindeki teknolojik ilerlemelerle birlikte gelişerek popülaritesini arttıran ve beraberinde de tartışmaların merkezinde kalan ilgili tıbbi prosedür hukuki ve etik uygulanabilirlik açısından incelenmiştir. Çalışma beş bölümden oluşmaktadır: Birinci bölüm ‘’ölüm ve postmortem değişimler’’; ikinci bölüm ‘’ceset üzerinde tasarruf yöntemleri’’; üçüncü bölüm ‘’kriyoprezervasyon’’; dördüncü bölüm ‘’hukuki açıdan kriyoprezervasyon’’ ve beşinci bölüm ‘’etik açıdan kriyoprezervasyon’’.

- by Hasan CAN
- •
- Death, Death Studies, Cryopreservation, Vitrification

W niniejszej pracy staram się odpowiedzieć na tytułowe pytanie, które należy rozumieć szeroko: czy transhumanizm jest nową religią, ale także czy i w jaki sposób czerpie z idei religijnych, pełni religijne funkcje, jest uznawany za religię i może ewoluować w stronę religii. W pracy definiuję transhumanizm i prezentuję jego nurty oraz sytuuję go we współczesnym kontekście przemian duchowych. Opisuję także okołoreligijne źródła tej idei oraz przykłady religijnych koncepcji i inicjatyw w ramach transhumanizmu, omawiam technologie transhumanistyczne i poruszane przez nie zagadnienia i przedstawiam społeczną recepcję transhumanistycznych idei i wizji przyszłości. W podsumowaniu rozważam przyszłość transhumanizmu jako religii i quasi-religijnej metanarracji.

- by Jerzy Łepkowski
- •
- Bioethics, Contemporary Spirituality, Spirituality, Religion and Technology
- by Anya Bernstein
- •
- Religion, Russian Studies, Death Studies, Anthropology of the Body

In this volume chapter, we will address the notion of the divine while standing under the posthuman umbrella. Specifically, we will reflect upon four theological questions: 1. Are we becoming God(s)? In this section, we will present Transhumanism and the call for Human Enhancement. 2. Are we playing God(s)? In this section, we will analyze bio-conservative ethics and the resistance against Transhumanism. 3. Are we being God(s)? In this section, we will delve into Philosophical Posthumanism and post-dualism. 4. Are we killing God(s)? In this section, we will reflect on Antihumanism and the Death of God. The results of our enquiry are employed to illuminate how the posthuman turn embraces technology not as an ontological vacuum impermeable from the implications of the divine, but as an evolution of the all-encompassing manifestations of God (to be intended broadly, as a theistic, syntheistic and atheistic notion). This reflection will open original outcomes. On one side, technological beings, such as robots and advanced AI, could attain enlightenment; on the other, blind faith in Big Data may eventually replace belief in traditional God(s). In this open and non-sectarian way, the 1 realm of the divine stands as a source of substantial inspiration to the posthuman quest and vision.

- by Francesca Ferrando
- •
- Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Posthumanism, Spirituality

Der erste Band der Serie zu Mumien und Mumiengeschichten befasst sich mit Einbalsamierten Monarchen, Päpsten, Moorleichen und Mumien in Europa. Wissenschaftliche Studien, unterhaltsame und manchmal bizarre Mumiengeschichten werfen ein spannendes Bild auf die europäische Tradition der Mumifizierung: Die Entdeckung von Ötzi und die bekanntesten Moorleichen (Tollund-Mann, Grauballe-Mann, Lindow-Mann u. viele weitere) Karl der Grosse: Erst seit der erneuten Inspektion von 1988 ist bekannt, dass der fränkische Kaiser mumifiziert war. Die Mumien von katholischen Heiligen: Katharina von Bologna, welche sich Kraft des Glaubens auf ihren heutigen Platz im Altar gesetzt haben soll. Das Wunder der Heiligen Bernadette von Lourdes. Eine perfekt erhaltene Leiche, deren wundersame Erhaltung grosse Fragen aufwirft und möglichweise nur als religiöses Wunder erklärt werden kann. Die Mumie von Padre Pio Die Reliquie der Maria Magdalena in Südfrankreich Die Bestattung der Habsburger in Wien und das berühmte Einlassritual. Ludwig II. von Bayern, kein Selbstmord, sondern Königsmord. Dies legt die Analyse der letzten Stunden im Leben des Märchenkönigs nahe: Mit der Autopsie und der Mumifizierung wurden vermutlich die Spuren des Mordes beseitigt - doch der Autopsiebericht enthält verdecke Angaben, welche den Mord bezeugen. Die Mumie der Ludovika Wilhelmina, Herzogin in Bayern, der Mutter der berühmten Sisi von Österreich Die Odyssee des mumifizierten Kopfes von Oliver Cromwell. Die fast zu gut erhaltene Leiche von Napoleon Bonaparte und die Diskrepanzen bei den Totenmasken. Jeremy Bentham und das Konzept der Auto-Ikone. Die Kapuzinergruft in Palermo, ein sizilianischer Totenkult. Kryonik - die Mumifizierung der Zukunft.
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-3757566715
https://www.amazon.de/dp/3757566718/
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B7KL188F
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0B7KL188F/

- by Michael E . Habicht
- •
- Forensic Science, Bioarchaeology, Habsburg Studies, Cult of Saints

Syllabus, graduate seminar, Anthropology, UC Berkeley, Fall 2016

This essay reflects on the concept of cryonics as a technology that will in the future enable cryopreserved people to be returned to life when the cure for the disease that killed them is found. The longstanding dream of prolonging human existence, mainly with recourse to cryonics, will be examined through the lens of Don DeLillo's Zero K (2016), Robert Begam's courtroom thriller Long Life (2008) and Clifford D. Simak's Why Call Them Back From Heaven? (1967). The fantasy of cryonics is becoming increasingly visible in contemporary culture, with recent books and films addressing this subject. The utopian, transhumanist vision of a future where much longer life spans will be achievable is a dream that only the wealthy elites can afford, with megacorporations usually exploiting those with less funds but who also wish to undergo cryosuspension for later resurrection. Recent work by a number of bioethicists such as Francesca Minerva (2018), Ole Martin Moen (2015) and David Shaw (2009) on the case for and against cryonics from a bioethical point of view will help shed light on the main thematic concerns these works of speculative fiction engage with, pointing the way to future scenarios that the rapid advancement of biotechnologies will make possible.

Body cryopreservation (cryonics), is an experimental medical procedure aimed at bringing legally declared people back to life by bringing them to the medical advances of the future. Ultra-low temperatures (-196 °C) are used to prevent post-mortem changes observed on the corpse under natural conditions in the post-mortem period and to suspend metabolism activities in order to maintain the body (cellular size) for an indefinite period of time. Since the early studies in the early 1960s, cryopreservation practice has become an evidence-based practice that uses emergency medical procedures and modern vitrification technologies to eliminate ice formation from a theoretical concept.
Since the body cryopreservation procedure is not legally regulated in any region except for the state of British Columbia (Canada) worldwide, it is an issue with a general gap outside the relevant state. Since there is no direct norm that prohibits body cryopreservation, the cases that have been the subject of litigation in courts so far have been analyzed according to existing legal rules and crime types. Considering that law and ethics science will be shaped according to changing social conditions, it is likely that various regulations will be adopted by lawmakers over time.
In the study, the related medical procedure, which has increased in popularity with the technological advances in the process, and which has been at the center of the discussions, has been examined under the title of "Legal and Ethical Applicability of Body Cryopreservation". The study consists of five chapters: The first chapter is "death and postmortem changes"; the second part is ''disposal methods on the corpse''; the third part is ''cryopreservation''; the fourth part is ''legal aspect of cryopreservation'' and the fifth part is ''ethical aspect of cryopreservation''.

- by Hasan CAN
- •
- Medical Law, Death, Medical Ethics, Cryopreservation
- by Grant Otsuki
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- Anthropology, Transhumanism, STS (Anthropology), Cryonics

Cryonics denotes research into and the practice of deep-freezing dead bodies for resuscitation in a technologically advanced future. This article discusses the technoscientific practice and rationality of cryonics, focusing on two aspects in particular: the ways in which conceptions of life and death and their relation are being reconfigured, and the cryonic understanding of personality and its relation to the body. It complements the range of topics discussed in the literature on cryonics by adopting a feminist perspective and placing particular emphasis on the importance of taking into consideration the materiality, processuality and relationality of life and death in the cryonic imaginary. The analysis draws on Rosi Braidotti's adaptation of the conceptual pair of bios and zoe in order to demonstrate that cryonics is premised on the humanist separation of the human as a purely cultural being from 'Nature' as his materially determined other(s). The article argues that cryonics seeks to preserve not only individual lives, but also the increasingly challenged humanist conception of human life as exceptional, self-contained and independent of Nature. The notion of dezoefication is introduced to encapsulate the desire to disentangle the human from (his) nature. Finally, the analysis is complemented with Donna Haraway's approach to a relational ontology, which emphasizes the vulnerability that is associated with relationality. It thus accounts for the humanist bias against relationality and the fear of death as 'becoming other', which are considered to be constitutive of techno-utopian projects such as cryonics.

- by Franziska von Verschuer
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- Feminist Theory, Death Studies, Posthumanism, Feminist Epistemology

This research examines the practice of cryonics and provides empirical evidence for an improved understanding of the motivations and attitudes of participants. Cryonics is the freezing of a person who has died of a disease in hopes of restoring life at some future time when a cure may be available. So far, about 300 people have been cryopreserved, and an additional 1200 have enrolled in such programs. The current work has three vectors. First, the results of a worldwide
cryonics survey (n=316) carried out as part of this research are discussed. Second, a theoretical model is developed from the survey results to propose a Theory of Cryonic Life Extension which explains an individual’s decision to select cryopreservation. Third, the most distinctive survey result, a conceptualization of personal identity malleability, is extended with a philosophical formulation. Personal identity is found to be emergent, not fundamental, and thus may continue to evolve in concept and application, particularly in the longer time frames implicated by cryonics. The potential consequences of this work are that the conceptual norms materializing in the cryonics community could be forerunners of wider societal trends of how humans understand themselves as subjects in an era increasingly configured by science and technology.

- by Melanie Swan
- •
- Philosophy of Technology, Posthumanism, Continental Philosophy, Transhumanism

The field of life extension is full of ideas but they are unstructured. Here we suggest a comprehensive strategy for reaching personal immortality based on the idea of multilevel defense, where the next life-preserving plan is implemented if the previous one fails, but all plans need to be prepared simultaneously in advance. The first plan, plan A, is the surviving until advanced AI creation via fighting aging and other causes of death and extending one's life. Plan B is cryonics, which starts if plan A fails, and assumes cryopreservation of the brain until technical capabilities to return it to life appear. Plan C is digital immortality in the sense of collecting data about the person now so future AI will be able to recreate a model of a person. Plan D is the hope based on some unlikely scenarios of infinite survival, like so-called "quantum immortality". All these plans have personal and social perspective. The personal aspect means efforts of the increasing chances of personal survival via taking care about one's own health, signing cryocontract or collecting digital immortality data. The social aspect means the participation in collective work towards creation and increase of the availability of life extension technologies, which includes funding scientific research, promotion of life extension value and direct performing of research and implementation, as well as preventing global catastrophic risk. All plans converge at the end, as their result is the indefinite survival as an uploaded mind inside an ecosystem, created by a superintelligent AI. Highlights: • By combining plans for survival in the correct order, a person could get maximum chances to the personal immortality.

- by Alexey Turchin
- •
- Aging, Immortality, Life Extension, Cryonics
- by Joseph Antony
- •
- Catholic Moral Theology, Cryonics, Physical Immortality

The article focuses on a change in the understanding of death. Transhumanism is here understood as a reaction to the technicization of culture. One of the areas which are declared to be transcended by technology is human mortality. Analysis of such a change is conducted to show that one does not need a working technology that abolishes death, but that the change could be cultural and have significant impact on human life. This process of transcending death with the usage of technology is understood as a fictionalization of death. The philosophical and cultural outcomes are analyzed for human existence.

- by Rafał Ilnicki
- •
- Death Studies, Transhumanism, Anthropology of Death, Philosophy of Death

This article outlines the history of cryonics, starting with fictional novels and movies and the actual formation of the cryonic movement in the 1960s. Cryonics has been considered – by its advocates – to overcome religion by offering a technological way of immortality. Since cryonics never gained serious attention outside the United States it is promising to ask for the specific frame of American funeral culture as a condition for the emergence (and the limitations) of cryonics.

- by Krüger, Oliver
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- Transhumanism, Funeral Practices, Transhumanism/Posthumanism, Cryonics

This paper addresses five questions: First, what is trajectory of Western liberal ethics and politics in defining life, rights and citizenship? Second, how will neuro-remediation and other technologies change the definition of death for the brain injured and the cryonically suspended? Third, will people always have to be dead to be cryonically suspended? Fourth, how will changing technologies and definitions of identity affect the status of people revived from brain injury and cryonic suspension?
I propose that Western liberal thought is working towards a natural end, a “telos.” In response to a variety of biotechnologies, law and public opinion in liberal democracies will be forced to make explicit that the rights of a living thing are determined by its level of consciousness. I discuss the way that technology will force three clarifications about the value of consciousness, at the beginning, the end and boundaries of human life. Sentience and personhood will become the basis of moral concern, regardless of its media. Just as human rights have become independent of race, gender and property, rights will become independent of being a breathing human being.
But even as we make this transition, the cryonically preserved are still likely to be considered dead for pragmatic reasons, albeit with gradually increasing rights as technology makes their reanimation increasingly probable.
I suggest that it could be acceptable to cryonicists that the frozen continue to be defined as dead if assisted suicide can be legalized. Under a liberal assisted suicide policy cryonicists might be allowed to carry out suspension before a declaration of death, preserving the maximum amount of neural information.
The gradual redefinition of life and personal identity in terms of psychological continuity will also have consequences for the legal status of the reanimated. If, due to information loss, the reanimated do not meet a threshold of psychological continuity, they may be considered new persons. Cryonicists may therefore wish to specify ahead of time whether they are still interested in being reanimated if pre-animation assessment suggests that the result will not meet the necessary threshold of continuity.
Finally, I touch on the way that neural technology will fundamentally problematize the separate, autonomous self on which liberal democratic values are based, leading to a legal and political Singularity. It is this looming neural Singularity that makes the proposed liberal democratic telos a final stage in humanistic thought, before it is superceded by something radically different.

- by James J. Hughes
- •
- Death Studies, Cryonics, Liberal-individualism

In October of 2018, Norman Hardy became the first individual to be cryopreserved after successful recourse to California's then recently passed End of Life Options Act. This was a right not afforded to Thomas Donaldson, who in 1993 was legally denied the ability to end his own life before a tumor irreversibly destroyed his brain tissue. The cases of Norman Hardy and Thomas Donaldson reflect ethical and moral issues common to the practice of assisted dying, but unique to cryonics. In this essay, I explore the intersections between ideologies of immortality and assisted dying among two social movements with seemingly opposing epistemologies: cryonicists and medical aid in dying (MAiD) advocates. How is MAiD understood among cryonicists, and how has it been deployed by cryonicists in the United States? What are the historical and cultural circumstances that have made access to euthanasia a moral necessity for proponents of cryonics and MAiD? In this comparative essay, I examine the similarities between the biotechnological and future imaginaries of cryonics and MAiD. I aim to show that proponents of both practices are in search of a good death, and how both conceptualize dying as an ethical good. Cryonics members and terminal patients constitute unique biosocial worlds, which can intersect in unconventional ways. As temporalizing practices, both cryonics and MAiD reflect a will to master the time and manner of death.

- by Jeremy Cohen
- •
- Anthropology, Death Studies, Transhumanism, Euthanasia

In a recent case, Re JS (Disposal of Body), United Kingdom High
Court of Justice, Family Division rendered a path breaking
judgment by allowing a 14-year-old minor girl, suffering from
cancer, to be cryogenically preserved, as per her wish, after
death.1 The judgment opened up plethora of questions pertaining
to cryonics which range from issue of burial, rights of the dead,
rights after revival of dead and the legal consequences thereof. In
this paper an attempt has been made to understand the meaning
of cryonics, status and disposal of dead body, definition of death
and legal dynamics of cryogenic preservation in India & other
jurisdictions.

- by Chirag Balyan
- •
- Philosophy Of Law, Cryonics

Cryonics is the low temperature preservation of people who can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine in the hope that future medicine will make it possible to revive them and restore their health. A speculative practice at the outer edge of science, cryonics is often viewed with suspicion. In this paper I defend two theses. I first argue that there is a small, yet non-negligible, chance that cryonics is technically feasible. I make the case for this by reference to what we know about death and cryobiology, and what we can expect of future nanorobotics. I further argue that insofar as the alternatives to cryonics are burial or cremation, and thus certain, irreversible death, even small chances for success can be sufficient to make opting for cryonics a rational choice. Finally, I reply to five objections.

- by Ole Martin Moen
- •
- Bioethics, Death, Transhumanism, Cryonics

Transhumanism has gained more and more momentum over the last decades. It seeks to improve the human condition by technologically interfering in the human body and its evolution. This talk focusses on cryonics as a meeting point of a number of transhumanist visions. The research into and the practice of deep-freezing dead bodies for resuscitation in a technologically advanced future aims to “cheat” death. For “lifespanners”, it holds the promise of curing their deadly diseases after all and that the degenerative process of aging can be decelerated or stopped. For “immortalists”, who envision the conflation of man and technology but don't expect the necessary technological advances to be achieved within their lifetime, cryonics serves as an interim technique “transporting” them to the future.
The paper is based on an analysis of cryonicists’ publications and a review of the social scientific literature. By adopting a Feminist Neomaterialist perspective, it becomes possible to show that cryonics and its promises are premised on and reproduce a power relation that fundamentally structures western culture: the humanist separation of the human as a purely cultural being from “nature” as his materially determined other(s). The preservation cryonics promises proves to be directed not only at individual lives, but also at the increasingly challenged humanist conception of human life as exceptional vis-à-vis other life forms, self-contained and independent from “nature”. The paper shows that although cryonics is seen as a door to a transhumanist future, it is equally guided by the past and humanist values.

- by Franziska von Verschuer
- •
- Secular Humanism, Biotechnology, Transhumanism, Nature Culture

In 2019, Princeton University Press published The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia, a book about contemporary Russian immortalism and its advocates. The book’s author Anya Bernstein hails from the Moscow punk underground (in the mid-1990s, she was the guitarist of the band Straw Raccoons), but now teaches anthropology at Harvard, specializing in religion, secularization, body politics, time, and art and censorship. In addition, Bernstein has made two films about Buryat Buddhism and shamanism—Join Me in Shambhala (2002) and In Pursuit of the Siberian Shaman (2006)—which are also the subjects of her book Religious Bodies Politic: Rituals of Sovereignty in Buryat Buddhism (2013). For this issue of Sreda magazine, Eugene Kuchinov talked to Anya Bernstein about immortal bodies and the politics they generate, the language that Russian cryonics uses to describes itself, universal resurrection, the violence of museums, and permafrost as a non-human archive.
https://sreda.v-a-c.org/en/read-14
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В 2019 году в издательстве Принстонского университета вышла книга The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia, посвященная «русскому бессмертию» — различным идеям, проектам и движениям в рамках современного русского иммортализма, а также людям, которые его представляют. Автор книги, Аня Бернштейн, вышедшая из московского панк-андерграунда (она была гитаристкой группы «Соломенные Еноты» в середине 1990-х), ныне преподает антропологию в Гарварде, специализируясь на темах религии, секуляризации, телесной политики, времени, искусства и цензуры. Кроме того, Аня сняла два фильма о бурятском буддизме и шаманизме — Join Me in Shambhala (2002) и In Pursuit of the Siberian Shaman (2006) — которым посвящена первая ее книга, Religious Bodies Politic: Rituals of Sovereignty in Buryat Buddhism (2013). Специально для журнала Sreda Евгений Кучинов обсудил с Аней бессмертные тела и связанную с ними политику, язык, которым описывает себя русская крионика, воскрешение для всех, музейное насилие и вечную мерзлоту как нечеловеческий архив.
https://sreda.v-a-c.org/ru/read-14

- by Eugene Kuchinov
- •
- Utopian Studies, Shamanism, Archives, Transhumanism
- by Amanda du Preez
- •
- Mutation, Cryonics

Le transhumanisme est un courant d’idées qui prône une transformation de l’être humain par la mise en œuvre de nouvelles technologies, dans des visées d’augmentation des capacités humaines et de prolongation importante de la vie. Né en Californie en 1988, il a diffusé ses thématiques dans le monde entier. S’il est l’objet de nombreuses études philosophiques, éthiques, théologiques, politiques, sociologiques, il a peu suscité de recherches proprement historiques, notamment de son mouvement. Or l’histoire du mouvement permet de mieux cerner ce qu’est le transhumanisme – entre controverse, mouvance et mouvement – et ce qui constitue sa structure idéologique. Une telle approche s’appuie sur la confrontation des publications, des traces numériques du mouvement et des trajectoires de ses membres.

- by Franck Damour
- •
- History, Technology, Transhumanism, Histoire
- by Todd Huffman
- •
- Cryogenics, Aging, Biology, Scanning Electron Microscopy

Robert Ettinger argues, in The Prospect of Immortality, that cryonic preservation of the newly deceased offers people the hope of being transported to a time when the technology exists that would enable them to be revived, and their... more

- by Charles Tandy
- •
- Cryonics
- by Hallvard Haug
- •
- Cryonics
- by Roman Sitelew
- •
- History of Science and Technology, Cryobiology, Cryonics
- by Steven B Harris
- •
- Cryogenics, Aging, Scanning Electron Microscopy, Cryopreservation

This article deals with The quest for immortality as a technical problem. Krüger starts with the observation that since the middle of the 1980s some American researchers in the field of robotics, cybernetics and physics created the philosophy of posthumanism by pretending that within the next century the human race will have been swept away by the tide of cultural change, usurped by its own artificial progeny: robots and artificial intelligence. This future of life on earth is described as “postbiological”, “posthuman” or “transhuman”. While considering the extinction of the human race as a necessary progress in the history of evolution the posthuman thinkers connect this idea with the vision of the technological immortalization of mankind. All or some human beings should be scanned and loaded up into the storage of computers—there they should live forever as an exact simulation of their original personality. This vision has often been perceived as a postmodern form of Gnosis or Platonism. Oliver Krüger argues that posthumanism has to be understood as an utilitarian philosophy in the context of European philosophy of progress.

- by Krüger, Oliver
- •
- Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Immortality, Cryonics

The fantasy of preserving and prolonging life is a longstanding dream, often dramatized in literature. A common plot device includes placing the main character in a deep, long-lasting sleep and having him/her wake up many decades, sometimes centuries later to a completely different society. Cryonics, although using a very different technology from suspended animation, already on offer in 3 facilities in the United States and one in Russia, provides a scientific, medical avenue suggesting this dream might one day be fulfilled.
I will analyse Don DeLillo’s Zero K (2016) as a philosophical meditation on human life and death with strong posthumanist and transhumanist overtones. I read it as an allegory of the vicissitudes of human existence and the promise of an afterlife, of coping and desisting, of a journey into the underworld of myth and fantasy, couched in a post/transhumanist hope that technology, in this case cryonics, will deliver people in suspended cryonic animation from their limbo into the future world of meaningful existence, including potentially meeting that person’s loved ones again or their descendants. In certain important ways it parallels Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hell guided by Virgil, an intertextual echo that will be analysed.
As a theoretical framework I will engage with the recent work of a number of bioethicists such as Ole Martin Moen and David Shaw on the case for and against cryonics from a bioethical point of view.

- by Aline Ferreira
- •
- Don DeLillo, Transhumanism/Posthumanism, Dante's Inferno, Cryonics

From 'Volumes', a sporadic series of first person writings on art education, community art and using curatorial methods. This text covers a big year in the life of community project tenantspin with the major projects A Winter's Tale and... more

- by Alan Dunn
- •
- New Media, Sound, New Media Art, Sound Art
- by Christopher C Yorke and +1
- •
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Bionics, Malchronia, Cryonics