Long Term Personal Storage at CI

Recently there was an inquiry about CI providing members personal storage space. This discussion took place at Cryonics_Institute@yahoogroups.com

From Ben Best

The figure I quoted of $6 per year for a banker's box volume in a limestone cave was secondhand information from what I believe is a reliable source. But people who are interested should take prices directly from the vendor, and not from me.

I have previously felt that our storage allowance were too generous and now as President (with Robert Ettinger's agreement) I am implementing a new policy for perpetual storage. A Member will have a 2inch limit on the amount of material they can include in their Member/Patient file for perpetual storage. Members/Patients who currently have more than this amount will be grandfatheredin at their current holdings.The two inches includes all of the signup documents, insurance and similar materials, plus whatever else a Member may want to send. Option Two Members can have two inches as well, but if they do not keep their dues paid, they lose the privilege, unless they become patients.

Members who want more space can buy space in a lockable filing cabinet drawer which will be reserved for them in perpetuity. The filing cabinet will be on the CI premises and will be protected with nearly the same diligence as the patients. The drawer volume is 2feet deep, 1foot wide and 9inches high. The cost will be $1,000 per drawer. Although filing cabinets are not expensive, perpetual storage space has a cost. Option One Members can buy the space predeanimation, but Option Two Members can only buy the space as patients. Option One Members can remove materials and add materials from theirdrawer(s) at any time, but must pay shipping and handling costs.

Perpetuity means forever. We will have an agreement similar to the suspension agreement.

Realistically nothing is forever the Sun will burnout, entropy will rundown, and protons will decay. But try taking us to court after protons have decayed! Seriously, CI will make "best efforts" to maintain these drawers in perpetuity for as long as they are wanted.

Ben Best

Again, from Ben:

"Carl" writes:

$1000 for a file drawer? Is it made of solid gold with platinum handles?

Carl

The filing cabinet is not expensive. Preservation in perpetuity requires both real estate and stewardship. Compare this with storage prices at other sites eg http://www.publicstorage.com/ where you will be paying lots more for a few decades of storage.

Shoparound and let me know if you can beat this price anywhere for even 100 years of storage for a comparable volume. I doubt that anywhere else even offers perpetual storage. Mind you, perpetual storage does mean "until something goes horribly wrong", like a nuclear strike. But in that case, the patients and our own lives would be lost as well.

Ben

"Giuseppe" wrote:

Please, I like to know if CI can store just one CD of personal data in the suspension member's file indefinitely (free of charge). It would include an autobiography, major event photos and a character/personality profile. I think that this would be enough for me to reconstruct my memory. What does everybody think about this?

As I mentioned, every CI Member can use up to 2inches of file folder space at no extra charge. With the normal amount of paperwork, a single CD should add about 3/8 of an inch (just under a centimeter) to your width allotment and therefore be within bounds.

Ben Best

From:"ladyrhianna"

As to the storage issue, I personally wouldn't expect CI to hold anything serious, if anything at all. Maybe a space the size of a couple shoeboxes for each member for the items they know they'd want immediately upon revival (some jewelry, a book or two, personal papers, etc). This is all I would personally and reasonably expect from CI in this regard. What you would choose to charge for such a service is, of course, completely up to you. I'd say whatever you need to charge in order to cover those costs.

My thought would also be that, if a person chooses storage of some possessions offsite, it would be nice if CI could keep records of what is stored where, in case one's memory did not make it through suspension completely intact, so they could at least reacquire their personal items (Even if, god forbid, they didn't quite remember what they were or why they were significant .

From: James Swayze

Forgive me if I am mistaken and perhaps conflating Alcor policies with CI's but I thought we already stored a certain size of container for each member. I agree, however, that the benign atmosphere of the limestone mine facility would be better for certain types of data. One should try where possible to scan all photos and documents into digital form because certain paper medium can deteriorate with time, especially acid treated. Photos can fade depending how old they are to begin with. Digitizing also decreases the size but where one might want the originals to survive for sentimental reasons a backup is wise and moreover a duplicate backup at a different local is wiser.

If one is thinking about storing collectibles for sentimental reasons this is fine but if expecting them the be an investment it is my opinion that future technologies will allow the complete, down to every minute scratch at the atomic level, duplication therefore rendering all collectibles for investment valueless. The only items of this nature that will be safe will be those encased in acrylic and under 24 hour guard from anyone slipping a few nano spies onto so to record the duplication map. In other words, in my humble opinion, don't waste your time and money trying to horde gold coins or whatever.

These subjects are vital to our endeavors and especially discussions about how we might actually achieve reanimation. Now is the time to plan our revival and what terms for it we would accept. As someone pointed out having a more complete map for the journey goes farther for gaining new members than does proselytizing them with our faith that others will do it for us when.

As to reconstructing memories and let's not forget also *personalities* that might not weather the trip so well I think it is useful to record what types of media or meme generators that influenced you to become who you are and why you made this and other choices. To this end, as it has been discussed on cryonet before, we each need to make a video interview to ourselves to be played back upon need after reanimation. Perhaps the conversion of such from tape and other media to DVD could be something it would make more sense for one agency such as CI to handle rather than we each trying so on our own.

Questions:

1. Why only one hundred years storage at the Underground Vault Storage facility?

2. Could they be persuaded to extend it?

3. Does anyone have the price for prepaying that one hundred years worth of storage, $6 one time fee sounds too good to be true to me?

James

From John de Rivaz

You need to be aware that data on CDs will only last of the order of 50 years. Also CD standards and players last only a few years, and it would be necessary for CI to keep the digital files re recorded into the latest format as standards change. Maybe a permanent nanotechnology based standard will emerge, but the history of technology suggests that standards never last long. Try replaying an old wire recording, for example, or even a video tape recording made with an early Sony domestic VCR, such as the CV2100CE.

John de Rivaz:

From RonHavelock

John, all of what you say is true about standards. (I have a lot of old beta tapes and a beta player somewhere in the attic to demonstrate the point) but we are also getting better and better at retrieving old stuff. I doubt that retrieving material from an old wire recording would be much of a challenge to an expert in such things any more than reading heiroglyphs is a challenge to an Egyptologist. Classicists like my late father have been reading Greek off pottery chards for generations. That stuff goes back 3,000 years. The great advantages of digital recording are [1] extreme accuracy, [2] extreme compaction, and [3] extremely rapid and cheap transfer within and across media. These are all important for storing large quantities of material which are important in preserving aspects of our personal identity.

I am not sure where you get your "50 years" from but the third feature I mention above suggests the possibility of moreorless infinite preservation simply by transferring items to the most advanced media of the time, assuming there is somebody on hand who cares. Additionally, as we move toward nanotech, required space will shrink, not expand, so that the storage costs for any one individual will become minimal if not even miniscule.

CI might be well advised to move aggressively into the identity storage business, adding a very positive and noncontroversial feature which might even attract new cryonauts if done well. Thus a subscriber could say to his or herself, "well, even if they can't bring me back, I have preserved a record of many of the things which are most important to me. Somebody some day may open up my recorded self and, to some degree, reexperience the life I have had."

Ron Havelock

p.s. this is a potential project to which I might be willing to devote some time and effort in league with others.