[extropy-chat] Essay on Physical Immortality (terminology)

[Damien Broderick]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Walker" <mark at permanentend.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2004 5:02 PM

> From: "Harvey Newstrom"
> > How about "ageless" as a word?

> I like 'ageless'. It is descriptive and doesn't look like an attempt to
hide
> behind jargon.

It's good by itself, better than, say, `antiagathic' (James Blish's 50-year
old term). But it leads to the horrid eye- and mouthful of `agelessness',
compared to the nifty `emortal' => `emortality'.

We have the same trouble with `deathless' (`deathlessness') , unless the
general condition is `deathlessanity'. :)

Harvey mentioned his dislike of made-up words, but it didn't seem to stand
in the way of laser, television, telephone, car, xerox, google...

(True, most of these items already existed and were on the market, so it was
convenient to embrace the term.)

I know this seems trivial, but selling the message crisply is often as
important as having the right message.

Besides, when it happens the common word will emerge over the top of our
heads. It'll probably be something like `zombies' or `ghouls' or `snakes'...

Damien Broderick