Immortality Drive

I watched a new special on the history channel over the weekend, called Life After People. Essentially, the show digitally illustrates what the world will be like 1 day, 1 year, 3 years, 9 years, 50 years, etc etc. After people are no longer living on earth. This show proposed that just one day after people, every power plant shuts down– we need people to maintain them. The lights are off, and technology as we know it is on the decline. This episode in particular was about what will happen to the bodies that are left behind: mummies, cryogenically frozen embryos, cryogenically frozen people, and human DNA altogether. I was so intrigued, I’ve changed the topic of my multimedia project completely; I will be focusing on the technology that humans have used and are currently used to “cheat death”. Many researchers agree that humans have an immortality drive that drives us to find ways to live the longest, preserve our genes, and preserve our species, by any means possible. Life After People also showcased a literal Immortality drive. Richard Garriot, the game developer that coined the term MMORPG with Tabula Rasa and Ultima, has created an Immortality Drive, or a microchip that is encoded with the DNA sequence of a few carefully chosen individuals. This list includes: Physicist Stephen Hawkins, Comdeian Stephen Colbert, Venture Capital founder Tim Draper, and Playboy Playmate Jo Garcia. Quite the… eclectic mix.

Are these the people that are agreed to influence our society now? or are these people that someone honestly believes should be what we leave’behind’ as a trace of humanity? Garriot, who traveled to the international space station to deliver the drive, has said that his hopes are that the next generation of beings that follow our existence will encounter these DNA sequences and be able to clone humans, thus extending humanity. Although this is an outrageous thought, which apparently a LOT of money has been put into, I can’thelp but think that its all a big joke. I guess the aliens will have the last laugh either way…

In completely unrelated news, here are some pictures I took of a feminist bathroom I encountered today.

Apparently the last one was cutoff, it said “When God created men she was only experimenting”

hmm… next time I visit this restaurant I will definitely make an effort to sneak into the men’s room and see what their artwork is like…