title: Extreme life extension: investing in cryonics for the long, long term.
abstract: This article explores American conceptualizations of finance, the future, the limits of biological time, and the possibilities of biotechnoscience through an investigation of the social world of cryonics-the freezing of the dead with the hope of future revival. I describe some of the cosmologies of life, death, time, and the management of the future that circulate within cryonics communities, and I draw out relationships between cryonics practices and discourses and more common forms of personal future management prevalent within American neoliberal capitalism. I also illustrate similarities and differences between cryonics and more mainstream biomedical technologies. In doing so, I argue that cryonics is one American manifestation of anxieties about aging, time, and the future. I investigate the impact of biotechnologies on self-making and biosociality, and argue that crafting of selves can be deeply entwined with practices of investment or hope in the future of biomedicine and technology.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. tromain@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Tiffany
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Romain
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001007:Anxiety; D001709:Biotechnology / Q000941:ethics / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D015925:Cryopreservation / Q000639:trends*; D003643:Death; D006801:Humans; D013995:Time; D014481:United States