Interesting. I'm going to run over to Amazon and buy this book. I finished reading "Snow Crash" a couple of months ago, and I thought it was a *great* book. I have a paperback copy of "Cryptonomicon", but I haven't gotten around to reading it (full time college student).

Oh man, I tickle at the thought of a movie version of "Snow Crash". The Metaverse in glorious hollywood-strength CGI. :eek:

-Cyc

You wanna talk about crap that sells? http://www.alexchiu.com/eternallife/index.html I don't know anyone that has paid money, but many people were advertising for him a while back. He had (may still have) a program that would earn you a free Immortality Ring if you did some advertising. Every 3rd geek had a .sig that said, "LIVE FOREVER!"
On a similar note, I think Marylin vos Savant had a pretty good answer this past Sunday (she has a column in the Sunday "Parade Magazine" insert in many national papers) to the question of immortality. She weighed the possibility of famine, disease, war, starvation, and most anything else unpleasant against living forever. I think her answer was that she would not enjoy immortality because there's always the possibility of living forever in complete unhappines. That goes double for me.

Plus, you would miss out on pie heaven!

i agree with that. and there would be technological advances and whatnot, but i'd be too afraid of getting bored.

Mmmm, pie heaven... pumpkin... boston cream... key lime... apple...

Getting bored: omg, good point. Never thought of that.

Although maybe in another five lifetimes, one could work out what people are really all about. Understanding women, huh, there's a five-lifetime project.

Ha! Tony is funny :)

Personally, I wouldn't mind being immortal, so long as I wasn't in jail or something. It'd be kinda neat, I think. Play with all the toys, do all sorts of fun things. I don't think I'd get bored. Besides, your love interests would constantly be getting old and dying, so you could just find another cute girl every couple decades and, uh, "have fun" that way :)

D - That's immor<b>T</b>al. You might be getting them confused. :)

Nah. Immortality == new woman at least every 60-70 years. :)

Being immortal?

I'm afraid of how "out of date" I'd become. Imagine spending eternity watching a world totally different from the one you were raised in. Imagine a world that becomes more alien to you with every passing day.

Imagine being relegated to sitting on a bench on a busy street, sighing wistfully about how spoiled the children are now, about how things were when you were a child and having the youth of the day listen to you with cute faces showing distaste and lacking comprehension of your words. How would you describe our lives to them?

That's how I sometimes think our human relics must feel, brought up in their times, what I might even consider a primitive world, living in our modern world.

I just keep envisioning tattered old bones resting on a bench by a dusty street. Immortality would be horrible.

http://www.starwars.com/databank/cha.../movie2_sm.jpg

Yoda, the ancient and revered Jedi Master. Nine hundred years old,
Yoda had trained Jedi for eight centuries, and was very powerful in the Force.