Category Archives: Nano-na-na

Alcor Excerpt From Tim Leary’s Book

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The story I just blogged about the nano tech talks at the cryonics conference reminded me that Timothy Leary wrote about Alcor in the book I worked on with him (Surfing the Conscious Nets). (Contrary to popular belief, however, Tim did not freeze his remains.)

I went and dug up the reference to Alcor, just for fun. For those of you with a copy of Surfing the Conscious Nets around, it’s on page 16. For the rest of you, I’ve created a scan here:

I’m sure this is OK with both Last Gasp publisher Ron Turner, who is a friend of mine, and would consider it promotion for the book, and Tim Leary himself, because he told me in 1995 that it was his dream to have all of his works freely available online. A dying wish, if you will.
(Yeah, we’re talking everything. So I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a few scans.)

On the bright side of the ledger, John Lilly, Jack Nicholson and Michelle Phillips have escaped with their “souls” intact. So far! Several of the lesser known Gabor sisters, rumor has it, had their pretty heads sliced and diced by Dr. Sidney Cohen’s gang. Elvis Presley? Who knows? Walt Disney? Janis Joplin? Jim Morrison? Just who exactly still lives frozen in blessed hibernation in the re-animation vaults of the Alcor-CryoCare Cryonics Foundation, in Riverside, California, as Jimi Hendrix does? — no thanks to Nick Rogue–all credit to Michael Hollingshead.
Then Andy Warhol started phoning me day and night. Cryonics is all Andy thinks about these days. So he says.

It’s A Nano-Crypto-Cryo Love Fest Baby

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Hey man, we’re all just doing the same thing: crunching numbers, creating submolecular-sized robots with organic cell-like properties, using those robots to re-animate the frozen remains of the deceased…

Mark Frauenfelder has written an article for Small Times about the Robert Freitas and
Ralph Merkle talks at
Alcor’s fifth annual Conference on Extreme Life Extension.

Cryonics Conference Brings Out Nanotech’s Extreme Optimists

These nanorobots, Freitas and Merkle believe, could be designed to perform any number of remarkable medical functions. Some could work like superpowered white blood cells that seek out and destroy pathogens. Others could serve as artificial red blood cells, charged with enough oxygen to allow their hosts to hold their breath for up to an hour. Still other nanorobots would repair broken chromosomes, or do a kind of Roto-Rooter on clogged arteries…

The presentations were greeted with enthusiasm by conference attendees, many of whom are members of Alcor, an Arizona-based organization that freezes its recently deceased members in liquid nitrogen in the hopes that they

Carbon Microtubules for everyone (This round’s on me!)

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Molecular-transistors are here. (Hee-haw!)

Now just what the heck does that mean? 🙂

Well, it’s kind of a long story, but the synopsis below does a pretty good job of summing it up.

Here’s this nice explanation (thanks ACM News service) along with a link to its longer version:
The Nanotube Computer,
by David Rotman at the MIT Enterprise Technology Review
(Technology Review (03/02) Vol. 105, No. 2, P. 36; Rotman, David)

Carbon nanotubes have the potential to significantly change the world of electronics over the next decade. Phaedon Avouris of IBM Research says that nanotubes can be fashioned into transistors that are superior in performance to silicon-based transistors. Molecular transistors based on nanotubes or nanowires could increase the number of devices that can be installed on a chip, boosting computer memory and logic circuits. Nanotubes are very compatible with existing semiconducting materials, and the possibility exists that they can be combined with silicon technology, although the dual metallic/semiconducting nature of nanotubes can complicate the fabrication of logic devices. They are also seen as an eventual replacement for silicon once it reaches the threshold of Moore’s Law. Meanwhile, companies such as Nantero are pursuing nanotube-based nonvolatile memory, which could eliminate the need for people to repeatedly boot up their computers and supplant dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). Nanotubes can also emit electrons at low voltages, and this property forms the basis of thin but cheap flat-panel displays that project a high-quality image; Motorola and other electronics firms are competing to build a working nanotube display. Nanotube research has helped raise the profile of nanoscale materials and their commercial applications, which could include minuscule biological sensors and light-emitting diodes, fuel cell electrodes, and many others.