Posthuman Blues

I ran across this website in this week's Pitch. Have yourself buried on the Moon for a cool $100,000. As a space enthusuiast (and activist, I guess, in a small way), this prospect bores and depresses me. It bored and depressed me when Timothy Leary opped out of cryonic suspension at the last minute and had his ashes launched into space. Extravagant gestures are wasted on the dead. I'd like to visit the Moon while I'm alive, even if this means bending the definition of alive.

In three-hundred years there might be a machine intelligence in total possession of my memories, attitudes and convictions (see post below). Will this silicon-based successor be me in any real sense? That depends on the "physics of consciousness" I brought up in the post about crop formations.

Tonight I'll be on Internet radio discussing Mars. Listen up. (And buy my forthcoming book.)