Cryogenics
by Jeff
Image text: 'Welcome to the future! Nothing's changed.' was the slogan of my astonishingly short-lived tech startup.
In this comic, Megan, disappointed with the pace of technology's improvement (and who isn't, we all thought by this point we would have flying cars and the flying skateboard like in Back to the Future 2 or a hyper technological future like in Blade Runner) decides to cryogenically freeze herself as soon as cryogenics are invented. Cryogenic freezing is the ability to freeze oneself, so that you do not age and do not experience the passage of time. It is a useful technology for long space flights or preservation.
However, to Megan's chagrin, when she wakes up, she is told that all the other scientists and engineers that were fascinated about the future, have also frozen themselves, so nothing has been invented while she was frozen. Then, all the scientists and engineers, realizing this, all try to freeze themselves again. However, if everyone does the same thing again, they will all way up in a matter of years and there will still be nothing changed.
Don't freeze yourself, engineers and scientists! We need your help!
December 12th, 2011
*wake up. Also Megan developed the Cryogenic technology in this comic.
December 12th, 2011
Tragedy of the commons?
December 14th, 2011
Not really… that is using a shared resources to eventual exhaustion. This is not using resources to permanent stagnation…
December 12th, 2011
They must’ve invented, perfected and embedded hairdressing nanobots in the air circulation, Megans hair is a mess when she wakes up but it’s combed and nice by the time the dialog ends.
December 12th, 2011
Maybe that was her invention as well, a build in feature of the pod.
December 12th, 2011
I disagree a bit on the basic dissapointment with our tech advancement. Yeah we did not reach some of the high flying hopes of sci fi authors.. but others we surpassed by far.
A tablet PC is just what various sci fi franchises call a datapad. Laser weapons are buildable ( not practical due to power drain and bulkiness..but we COULD build them). Global communication is everyday life. So are nonstop intercontinetal flights. And we can store lots of data in smaller and smaller devices.. remember the times when a 1.2 GB hard drive was HUGE?!
And let´s not forgot all the things we did not” achieve” so far, like nuclear WWIII, waterworld, The Euginic wars ( Star Trek)…
December 12th, 2011
“Laser weapons are buildable ( not practical due to power drain and bulkiness..but we COULD build them). ”
*have built them.
The military has successfully tested a laser mounted on a 747, with which they blew up something on the ground.
December 12th, 2011
Wasn´t aware of that.
December 14th, 2011
Google YAL-1. It was part of the tactical nuclear defense stratagem. Program has since been cancelled.
December 12th, 2011
That’s doubly-edged.
I generally agree with FreakRapunzel. Who would really have predicted the developement of the internet some twenty years ago? I remember some time ago, approaching Y2K, I dreamed of an high end Pentium 2. I saw the network card as an optional gimmick back then. Today a PC without one has a practical value next to nothing.
Then there is all that wireless stuff. I once saw a film where one guy always phoned is office to report the new number by which he could be reached. Of course, that was before when cell phones became common place.
And every five or ten years a new astonishing physical effect is discovered, which leads to some new technology emerging some ten years later and another ten years to become common place. Or disappear.
But I also know the disappointment thing.
One exapmle I have at hand is for Blender: they planned a feature to have multiple windows attached to the same process which was initially announced to appear in version 2.5
Now 2.6 is already out and the feature is no longer mentioned, or at least I did not find it.
But I am not bashing them. Great project, volunteers and all that. Rather impressive. It is somewhat disappointing because I looked forward to use multiple monitors with Blender.
December 12th, 2011
I know that it´s sometimes feeling slower then we hope ( or dream). But like you said: there´s always something new.
Sure first mention of it in Physical Review Letters and common availability seem to be sometimes too far away from each other.
I think this difference is what Megan disturbs: We got a lot of things were the theory is there.. but nobody could build it so far, or only in very controlled experiments.. like… Fusion Power, and it´s hard to wait when you know what´s possible with it.
Maybe that´s the problem: We know what might become of it , because we know things going on in research. Not all, but some. And the most astonishing things even make it to the regular news. We learn in school, that fusion power is possible, although not perfected yet. My grandma learned in school that the atom is the smalest, masive block of matter there is… Allies and Axis alike were working on nuclear weapons at that time already.
I think progess seems slow because we wittnes the process from first basic experiments or theories to the final product, instead of just beeing suprised by the product one day.
December 12th, 2011
Oh and i don´t know Blender, but at which intervals do the bring out new versions? Do we speak about weeks, months, years?
December 14th, 2011
Approximately two years per major release iirc. 2.5 came out in 2009.
December 12th, 2011
Remember the time when you needed two men to LIFT 640KB of RAM?
December 13th, 2011
That was before my time. But i do remember cell phones the size of a brick.
December 16th, 2011
Yes. And I remember “booting” a computer by
1. Toggling in a short “bootstrap” program
2. Running said program to read phase II from disc
3. Executing Phase II to load entire system into memory
4. Switch off carefully
5. Remove memory
6. Install memory into computer no. 2
7. Start Computer No. 2
December 12th, 2011
Maybe I’m being dense, but I don’t understand the image text. I’m guessing Randall didn’t actually have a short-lived tech startup with a humorous slogan, correct? If he didn’t, the image text doesn’t seem as funny or as interesting as usual. Am I missing something?
Help!
December 12th, 2011
“‘Welcome to the future!” would be a clichéd slogan for a tech company, as technological innovation is one way in which people judge the advancement or “futurization” of society. When the iPod or iPhone were invented, Steve Jobs might (although I don’t imagine he did) have started his presentation with “welcome to the future!” (or the similar “the future is here” or “the future is now”).
Randall is purporting (I’m pretty sure it is fictional for the purpose of the joke in this comic) to have had a tech startup, and perhaps as a joke, used the slogan “‘Welcome to the future! Nothing’s changed”. Of course, the “welcome to the future” is presumably designed to convey the aforementioned notion that the company has or will bring about great techonological advancements, and thus inspire confidence and excitement.
However, adding “nothing’s changed” negates the effect of the “Welcome to the future” but removing the notion that the futur ewill bring about technological change.
December 13th, 2011
“The Future is Fun! The Future is Fair!”
(You may already have won!) (you may already BE there)
December 12th, 2011
Orson Scott Card – The Worthing Saga
December 12th, 2011
do you mean
Orson Scott Card – And What Will We Do Tomorrow?
December 12th, 2011
The idea of cryogenics has come and gone over the years, but usually the idea is to be able to wait in this way for people to discover a cure for whatever disease the person is suffering from. The problem is that one of the cures needed would be the cure for “death by freezing” which has not yet been found for larger animals. Ironic that the engineers needed for that step are having themselves frozen.
Sitting back and waiting (cryogenically) while letting others do all the work clearly doesn’t work really well if too many people take the same approach. That’s been the problem in many communities driven by communist ideology.
“Wait, uh, guys” as one person recognizes the problem is pretty funny.
December 12th, 2011
For a recent examination of possible consequences of a society based on cryogenics see Lois McMaster Bujold’s latest “Cryoburn”. Interesting explorations of technological consequences.
December 12th, 2011
Interesting explorations of technological and societal consequences. eg. If you aren’t dead when cryogenically frozen, then you still have a vote. But how do you exercise your right to vote while frozen? How about giving your power of proxy to the corporation that holds your contract to maintain your body? What would a society look like where “Corporations are people too” includes corporations having the vote as well??? (nod to Stephen Colbert)
December 12th, 2011
It seems to me that the corporation that holds the contract to maintain your body is one entity which should be legally barred from holding your proxy, from the conflict of interest.
December 12th, 2011
Just think though, about all the other people who had to live through 30 years with no new technological advances. No new iJunk to buy, no new OS to upgrade to, no new media formats to have to keep up with…
It would be HEAVEN! The majority of the people left would be rich because they hadn’t spent their money on the always new, always different latest gadgets all the time. And by the time 30 years rolled past most people would have decided which of the many competing standards ( http://xkcd.com/927 ) they preferred, without being continually and continuously confused by new ones being added at breakneck pace.
December 12th, 2011
But the majority of people would be spending there money on repackaged or redesigned versions of the exact same technology — ‘Oooh, I have to have the iPad 28, it has a mirrored finish, and a bust of St. Nicholas etched on it.’
December 12th, 2011
*their — stoopid tipos
December 14th, 2011
Exactly. I always find it funny when people refer to cutting edge technology and identify Apple as being at the forefront. Consumer goods are not where cutting edge technologies are to be found.
December 12th, 2011
The majority of the people getting richer might not work out all that well. Much as I detest the never-ending parade of slightly improved, not-compatible-with-older-version, new gadgets, the lack of those would put an enormous number of people out of work, with no money to spend on anything. A thorough collapse of the economy.
Maybe we should have a law “Engineers may not be preserved cryogenically for the future.”
December 12th, 2011
Don’t they already do that? I’m fairly certain they do.
December 12th, 2011
A clever paradox; it’s fun, and funny, but flawed, methinks.
First, Megan seems to be presented here as a dyed-in-the-wool early adopter, (as in “I wanna use the Next Big Thing,” but on an ongoing basis) whereas any engineer, technologist, or innovator worth her salt wants to create — or at least be a part of — the Next Big Thing… so most engineers would probably opt out of the long-term layaway plan in the strip. I’d hazard that innovation would still happen, but probably wouldn’t be as financially successful, with most eager first-buyers having visions of cryonic sugarplums dancing in their heads.
Second, as a friend blogged a while back, the present is, by its nature, banal. Wait 30 years, and guess what: the present is still banal; we take for granted the day-to-day technology we use, like (for us) hot food in thirty seconds, pocket world-wide communicators, previous serious killer diseases reduced to an alphabet soup of vaccine names most children get before entering school, and so on. (Okay, so after several decades, we still haven’t figured out how to get from one coast of the US to the other in under three hours; if anything, we’ve lost ground on that one, with more time spent in lines to take off our shoes and belts and such… but I rather suspect that’s the exception than the rule.)
A more realistic scenario (but not nearly as funny as a strip) would be Megan waking up, saucer-eyed for a while, and then ready for an encore Rip-van-Winkle session as the excitement wore off.
December 12th, 2011
“How fast the world owes him something he did not know it existed just ten minutes ago.”
somewhere on youtube, unfortunately I forgot how to find it.
December 12th, 2011
I think you´re right there. I was reminded of that a bit whe nwatching a Torchwood episode with time travelers landing in Cardiff. Not the clichee of knights in shiny armour being shocked to death by cars.. but people from the 50s.. being shocked by automatic supermarked doors, outraged by the “nearly naked” women on magazines, “on childrens eye level !!!” ( comment from the one guardign them: she does a kids tv show), the cheap and ready availability of bananas and other “exotic” fruit… such seemingly banal things to us.
Oh and I like your example with traveling. Sure.. useless security checks slow things down a bit. But in general we got faster. letters and novels from the 17 and early 18th century tell us about weeks, or even months of traveling for distances I can do in a day by car. WE see that airport security steals us time, and that it seemed faster a few years ago… Goethe, Kant, Hobbes or Washington would see a miracle.
December 13th, 2011
“…traveling for distances I can do in a day by car…”
Indeed, and in extreme comfort. No dusty, bouncy, hard-benched travail across uneven countryside. We generally have paved roads, “convenience” stations for food, drink, and, well, that other function. No need to set out the horses, round up the wagons, fetch water from the nearby stream (if any,) polish up the revolver, and try to get fitful sleep as the wolves or coyotes or bears sauntered by through the night.
But to the airport example, we seem to have reached a technological plateau, or even yielded some there, just to point out that progress is not monotonically increasing.
As others here have illustrated, progress also brings with it some of its own complexities. Fast travel, we know, introduces world-wide disease distribution; Internet, information overload; Cryogenics, questions about voting and population growth; etc. If Megan did her repeated Rip-van-Winkle, would she some day wake up with “freezer burn”, that is to say: would she some day find herself in a world so alien that her grossly-out-of-date world view (and education) leave her completely unable to cope, and unable to relate to anybody else (given that no other original cryo-travelers followed her on that final trip…)
As said blogging colleague asked, wouldn’t it be facinating to escort somebody from, say, a hundred years ago through our world… mightn’t that be like the jaded adult seeing Disneyland again through one’s child’s eyes…?
December 13th, 2011
Someone from a hundred years ago might be interesting. But I think he/she would be able to cope eventually.
But go back another 50 years .. or even further…
Technology aside there have been some drastic social changes ( some of course related to technology).
As an example: A womans right to vote. Someone from right before WWI might think it outrageous, hillarious, about time or droll… or actually normal, depending on where they came from.
But go back another 50 years and most of europe hadn´t even heard of the idea. Go back another 50 and the concept would be to alien to even be mad about it ( and another 50 years back even a mans right to vote would be ).
December 13th, 2011
I think your Math is a bit off. 150 years Before WWI would be the late 1700s (Depending on where exactly in WWI you went back the 150 years somewhere between 1764-1768) concidering America would be founded roughly 10 years later, and the Magna Carta had been signed some 550 years ago, I’m thinking that the idea that a man could vote in his governemnt wouldn’t be that alien to them.
The idea that we let EVERYONE who meets some very minimalist requirements vote might suprise them, but the concept of voting wouldn’t.
December 14th, 2011
To the commone man? I think it would. Of course the Magna Charta dates far back. ( And the Greek and Roman democracies even more so.. although they were burried by time). But it only mattered to an elite.. the commoner on the .. well mud since there were few streets, didn´t care. Had better things to do, like.. survival.
Sure in the late 18th century a few did interested themselfs in votes for all. Sometimes even for women. But they were minorities. Guesss why they fled to settle a new continent
Oh and concerning math.. 4 times 50 gives 200
But I see your problem. I was refering to continental Europe. Britains ( and consequently the USs) history is different concerning participation of the people in government.
December 15th, 2011
“As an example: A womans right to vote. Someone from right before WWI might think it outrageous, hillarious, about time or droll… or actually normal, depending on where they came from.
But go back another 50 years and most of europe hadn´t even heard of the idea. Go back another 50 and the concept would be to alien to even be mad about it ( and another 50 years back even a mans right to vote would be ).”
50+50+50 = 3 times fifty, not four.
December 12th, 2011
We now all have access to GPS, instant, hi def sharable photos (without the messiness of Polaroids), personal phones, free long distance, and much safer cars. We can shop from our homes. The world our kids take for granted is much different from the world we baby boomers experienced and I’m guessing the same will be true for my grandkids compared to my kids.
December 12th, 2011
Medicine: McCoy might still claim we are butchers, but if you compare what we can do today to when star trek first aired, we have come a decent ways.
December 12th, 2011
As a slight asside, another potential issue of a cryo-active society is that, whereas births outpace deaths in the world today, and thus population is growing, if we cut deaths even further but putting people into statis and then later reviving them, I would imagine that the population growth rate would simply increase even faster. Plus you need enough space and energy to store and maintain all the cryo-folk
December 13th, 2011
I don´t think space is a problem. You can stack those pods fairly high.
And as long as they´re frozen they don´t need pensions .. so that migh be good. But imagine the day they all wake up toghether. Such a sudden jump in population can´t be healthy for economy and society.
December 13th, 2011
A cryo-active society would not cut only deaths, but also births. You cannot reproduce when you’re frozen. Even more so, when one of the sexes would be addicted to cryogenics more than the other.
The effects from both procrastinating death and not being able to reproduce should more or less compensate.
December 13th, 2011
Moreover, mightn’t there be some natural selection at play there? The cryo-active gene would gradually be bred out of the population, being competitively disadvantaged over time.
Still, wouldnt it be interesting to imagine the resulting social changes with significantly lopsided demographics until such time?
December 13th, 2011
Shouldn’t this comic also be tagged ‘White Hat’?
December 14th, 2011
Random thought: Couldn’t you theoretically use cryogenics to skip forward in order to drink and smoke legally while still biologically underage? I mean, get your driver license while underage, jump forward just a few years, wake up, and party down?
February 20th, 2012
I’m sure that people would wonder where you’ve been for the few years that you were frozen. Also, the age limit might be based in biological aging, since people haven’t developed any technology to prevent that yet.