Who would have predicted that boring old life insurance would become the ‘killer app’ that makes human replication technology truly transformational? But that does seem to follow from the logic of the situation.
The arguments for information-based life insurance are even more compelling than the arguments for teleportation. The advantages of travelling as information are speed, convenience, cost, and sustainability (in the form of lower carbon emissions). The final product is the same as conventional travel – the customer is (to all intents and purposes) transported from place A to place B. But in the case of life insurance, the product is radically transformed. Whereas traditional insurance merely mitigates the damage of death by providing monetary support to surviving family, the new insurance warrants the life of the policyholder by – in the event of his death – restoring him from a backup file. It changes our relationship to death, which is no small matter. Continue reading “Life Insurance as Game Changer”
Roger Beethey shows up late, with a blonde. Elliot gives him a pleading look. “Relax,” says Beethey.
Getting into the Institute turned out to be easy. Arriving in a crowd from the bus, he found the iid-controlled gate held open for him by a smiling girl. Security at that boundary is given low priority. The ‘free-campus’ tradition. Half-hidden in a big armchair in a departmental Reading Room – not his own department’s – he checks the messages on his phone. Nothing new that matters. He re-reads Elliot’s reply to EB, agreeing to meet before class. Elliot must be in his car by now, probably in slow traffic on the Expressway.
Finally an email from Dalton, on the last possible day. With misgivings, Elliot opens it. Nothing at all in the body, just Dalton’s signature and the animated IGo logo scrolling endlessly across the page.