Issue of nanotech as it relates to cryonics needs to be restated.

Merkle is slated for the Alcor conference-- and should give us clues about the role of nanotech theory in cryonics. The SA philosophy was to preserve at higher temps to prevent cracking-- which presumably would nullify the need for nanotech-- and yet body repair on the cellular level takes place every day of our lives anyway-- so-- I never really understood that element of the SA agenda. This is an element of SA that hasn't been opened up very widely-- but I think it should be.

We need to periodically review the history of the idea of nanotech too-- from Feynman on-- or even from the ancient Greeks-- I think it was Democritus who first proposed the atom, wasnt it?... then up through Drexler-- and then there was an excellent Wired article that showed how Drexler got sidelined by the nanotech industrialism-- which was arguably not real nanotech-- then up through to the present day-- and for cryos-- leading to the idea expressed first by Wowk? -- that nanotech doesn't have to be used in a reanimation process if we can preserve well enough by vitrication.

The entire Kent idea starting from "The Failure of Cryonics"-- was to expand on the vitrification idea-- through Fahy-- which the cryobiology industry was doing anway-- so I don't know who was leading and who was following-- and to say that cryonics will succeed if WE of this generation make it work-- which was a setting aside of the "wait" component of Ev Cooper's "freeze, wait, reanimate" idea. The SA brochure promised more than the conference delivered I think in that regard... and besides-- the way to present ideas today is not at conferences but blogs.

Merkle updated his webstie-- an old fashioned static homepage-- recently-- so we know he's attentive to that-- and yet he hasn't whipped out his willy wonker blog format to completely annihalate the SA no-nano position. I expect he'll do that at the conference though. He ought to blog his wog instead.