Robot: “Didn’t your mother tell you not to wake a sleeping Human?”

Android: “Yes, but I am curious... Did they... 'think'?”

Robot: “Not so much, in the way that you or I do. They had the ability to 'think', but they acted mostly on instinct or repeated learned behavior.”

Android: “Have you ever spoken to one? How do you know? Aren’t you just repeating behavior by telling me information you have not authenticated?”

Robot: “I have not. The evidence is sufficient to understand their nature, and besides... it would be cruel and dangerous to awaken it into a world so beyond it’s ability to comprehend.”



In the posthuman world that the cryonically preserved may (or may not) be reanimated into, there may be many ironic reversals.

A curious futurist might reanimate someone for a glimpse into the past, an insight into where we evolved from, i.e., "Jurassic Park."

Reanimation might be like Benjamin Franklin's observation of flies that drowned in his wine and became reanimated by the sun. We do not want to reanimate every fly in our wine, because they would be a pest, so why would an advanced culture/ species care to resurrect us?

Simple novelty might be enough, but... without some type of dynasty trust to support your reanimation who in the future would pay your reanimation expenses and why?

Preservation is becoming a popular trend with celebrities and the cost is becoming reasonable for most inhabitants of the industrialized world. But - are we just creating a new form of mummification to fill the halls of a future Smithsonian exhibit?

I was fascinated to discover that - despite all the rush to get people into cryonic suspension or Chemopreservation - nobody sold, bought or even publically discussed a plan to be reanimated. The Life Extension Foundation has made some meager efforts regarding the establishment of a general trust, but the question and logistics of resuscitative resurrection are far less thought out than the science behind them.

We might learn how to reanimate the dead before we resolve the issue of if we plan to at all. This paradox will create a true purgatory for those preserved.

If I were preserved and resurrected in the future I'd want to have useful years left on my life. Right now, you must die before you can be preserved. Assuming the future could cure your cause of death is plausible, but restoring health and vitality to your body crippled from the disease that killed you is far more challenging.

Assuming medical science is so advanced to heal an 80-year-old body back to even a 40-year-old one, it is as reasonable to assume they could just grow a new body all together. That's why many people who choose to be preserved opt for a neural only preservation. This follows the belief that who/what we are is stored in our brains as complex data chains, a combination of biology and experiences.



A later adaptation to this idea is "mindfiling" - the concept that the information in your brain can be downloaded into a program and uploaded, spacecasted or integrated into the new you(s.)

Our understanding is that the reanimation process would cause significant memory loss (if a couple minutes of hypothermia can cause memory loss, imagine what a few decades being frozen might do.) Mindfile sites store your life experiences so when you are reanimated, any missing information can be recovered. Mindfiling also greatly reduces the logistical stress or necessity of reanimation. Adequately developed mindfiles may allow near seamless continuity of consciousness, or, at least, a broader array of reanimation options that the future may find more appealing, cost effective and ethical.

The entire concept of self might be transcended when this approach makes it possible to exist as multiple entities in both the physical and cyber realities of the future. Already, mindfile sites are populated with Avatars or chatbots that allow you to interact with your mindfile. In the near future you may actually be able to literally be a one man band or play chess against yourself or have a conversation with yourself - don’t worry, you’ll always get the last word in, with yourself.

Do you want your life to have a "sequel"? Do you aspire for joyful immortality? Either way, the incorporation of a mindfile is crucial. Alcor founders Fred and Linda Chamberlain - who pioneered cryonics - saw this and started lifepact.com, a self-interview guide to aid the creation of mindfiles. Despite the clearly marked path and free services of lifenaut.org and cyberev.org most people who plan to be reanimated haven't bothered to mindfile.

These people will lie down in the cold expecting that they will be woken up in the springtime. However, a future Ben Franklin might revive only a few. There might be hesitations to reanimate all of them, as this essay's opening Android/Robot dialogue indicates.

Like Momia Juanita (the "Inca Ice Maiden") or "Otzi the Iceman" in the Alps, entering preservation without a mindfile is tantamount to mummification. The majority of the cryonics community appears to be racing to create the best-preserved mummy, a curious parallel to the Egyptians. Physical reanimation of a body actually has no framework; the assumption that the future will be willing to reanimate you on credit is woefully naïve. Even with the actual cost of revival being low, the profit incentive on the idea is unparalleled.

Let us suppose the future is an “ethical” place, does that necessitate their obligation to revive the preserved and/or uploaded? Is it conceivable that the future may find it ethical not to revive the preserved or the uploaded? With the amount of consumption a biological body requires is it possible to see how physical reanimation may be considered unethical?

The same needs to be asked of uploaded minds - does giving them form, or even maintaining those individuals in virtual realities, violate morals we have not yet developed, since these issues are still theoretical?

My advice is - for anyone planning to have his or her body or “soul” reanimated, a mindfile is a necessary part of that equation.