Future Salon

"I Hope I Never Die" Future Salon

Update: The RSVP works again. (Had a wrong expiration date.)

We were in the city at the Giant Robot shop to check out the APAC Little Sanctuary Art Show. The little paintings warm your heart.

The Giant Robot shop has cool mostly Japanese  nick nacks for urbanites. And there it was, "the" T-Shirt for our Nanomedicine and Cryonics Future Salon: A DJ-Monkey with the stated hope to live forever. I just had to get one.

Therefore if you want to see it on the body of steel, from picking up and putting down Nina, join us this Tuesday the 24th at SAP in Palo Alto for an evening with the expert who can tell you how to outrun the reaper: Ralph Merkle. - Or is it how to put the reaper on ice? ;-)

I like that the cartoon character is a monkey. Begs the question: "Are we the monkey of our own desires like: To live forever?"

Room for a great discussion. Let me know if you need 5 minutes to make your case. We may be able to accommodate you. I can hardly wait. All the details including how to tune into the live Webcast on the Nanomedicine and Cryonics Wiki page.

Please RSVP (http://tinyurl.com/yvmocq) so we can calculate food and drinks.

If you come with an equally cool on topic t-shirt, you will get in for free. No wait, everyone gets in for free. You get a free drink. No wait, everyone gets wine or beer if you want.
You will get thumbs up and definitely not everyone gets thumbs up at the Future Salon.

See you there. 6pm networking 7 o'clock session starts.

Savvy Solutions to Global Warming Cybersalon this Sunday

Our Cybersalon friends in Berkeley will discuss as they call it the hottest topic in town. (Of course I like to differ and point to the Cryonics and Nanomedicine Future Salon with Ralph Merkle this Tuesday the 24th :-)

We're discussing the hottest topic in town: “Savvy Solutions to Global Warming” are offered by Berkeley Cybersalon panelists Felix Kramer, founder of CalCars, promoting plug-in hybrids; David Hammond, of UC Berkeley’s & Resources Group and also a consultant on green chemistry with the Biomimicry Institute; and Jane White and Eli Noyes, founders of Project 3650, animators against global warming.

5-7 p.m., Sunday, April 22, the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St., Berkeley (www.hillsideclub.org). $10 at the door gets you pizza, drinks, and food for thought (and action).

Sunday is Nina's birthday, so I will not be able to make it, but it sounds great.
Sylvia Paull is the main organizer and there is a nice little writeup about her and the Berkeley Cybersalon in Fast Company. Check it out, the event as well as the article.

Cryonics: It's not looking good for the Control Group

Update:Nanomedicine and Cryonics Future Salon moved to Tuesday 24th of April. Please RSVP (http://tinyurl.com/yvmocq)

About 5 years ago Ralph Merkle presented at Park just down the road from SAP. I think it was an SDForum lecture series event, but I can't find it right now. There for the first time I heard about Cryonics. It was very interesting. The argument that stuck the most in my mind was. Hey, this is an experiment, you sign up for it or you don't. So far it is not looking good for the control group ;-)

Here the paragraph from Ralph Merkle's Cryonics page:

What to do

	It works	It doesn't work
Sign up	Live	Die, lose life insurance
Do nothing	Die	Die

How might we evaluate cryonics? Broadly speaking, there are two available courses of action: (1) sign up or (2) do nothing. And there are two possible outcomes: (1) it works or (2) it doesn't. This leads to the payoff matrix to the right. In using such a payoff matrix to evaluate the possible outcomes, we must decide what value the different outcomes have. What value do we place on a long and healthy life? (It is important to realize that the kinds of medical technology required to restore today's cryonics patients will almost certainly be able to restore good health for an extended period). What (presumably negative) value do we place on being dead? And finally, in the absence of direct experimental results in one direction or the other, what estimate do we make of the chances that it will work?

This week I stumbled upon a similar argument done by Pastor Rick Warren in an atheism versus God debate:

We're both betting. He's betting his life that he's right. I'm betting my life that Jesus was not a liar. When we die, if he's right, I've lost nothing. If I'm right, he's lost everything. I'm not willing to make that gamble.

If you believe in reincarnation, are you engineering yourself out of your true destiny by going the cryonics route? Any philosophers or religious people out there that have spent some time thinking about this? We are happy to give you 5 to 10 minutes to make your case at the event. Let me know.

Remember Cryonics is only one part of the Future Salon next Tuesday the 24th of April. Ralph Merkle will primarily cover what the latest developments in Nanomedicine are and I can't wait to hear them. More details to the event on the Nanomedicine and Cryonics Future Salon Wiki page.

Nanomedicine and Cryonics Future Salon

Update: Event moved to Tuesday 24th of April

So, you want to live forever? This Future Salon (Tuesday 24th of April) will cover the latest development in the area of Nanomedicine, which has the potential to erase most diseases. Live long enough to live forever, or if you can't live long enough, then give your body a little break via Cryonics.

Presenter Ralph Merkle is one of the top experts in molecular manufacturing. He served for several years as an executive editor of the journal Nanotechnology. He also chaired both the Fourth and Fifth Foresight Conferences on Molecular Nanotechnology; and won the 1998 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for theory.

Here the abstract of his talk:

Medicine has made major advances over the past century, and is poised
to advance even more rapidly in the coming decades. Indeed, before
the coming medical revolution has run its course we should all enjoy
much longer and much healthier life spans.

There is, of course, one annoying question: will we still be around
to benefit from all this new technology? Schedules tend to slip,
advances take longer than expected, perhaps the deadline (so to
speak) will pass us by.

We can, however, extend the deadline by cryopreserving ourselves.
Tissue stored at the temperature of liquid nitrogen remains unchanged
for thousands of years. This gives us a crude but effective time
machine, one that will let us reap the benefits of future medical
technology -- medical technologies that we can now see looming on the
horizon but which might not otherwise be developed in time for us to
use. Will future medical technology be able to restore a
cryopreserved human to good health? If so, there is a simple and
effective way for greatly extending our lives -- and a way to see how
the future unfolds.

I have created a wiki page for the collection of links and information about Nanomedicine and Cryonics. Please add your findings.

Please RSVP (http://tinyurl.com/yvmocq) so we can calculate food and drinks and may be even print some name tags again. (Don't hold your breath though :-)

A Future Salon has the following structure: 6-7 networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+ pm presentation and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross or Cafeteria depending on your responds. SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 map As always free and open to the public, spread the news and RSVP (http://tinyurl.com/yvmocq).