21st Century Kids

It is about time your kids get a taste of what is to come. With Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology, simulated environments, cryonics, and brain enhancement it would be smart to read this book to your kids in order to prepare them for the ethical challenges over the horizon. This book is a fun way to contemplate the implications of advanced technology and the way it may shape institutions in the future. "With all my enhancement chips and neural implants, was I even still 'human'?" ~Avryn

To begin with, the title, while not a misnomer, is misleading. It suggests that this is a book for kids, but in fact this is really a book for "the whole family." Someone, it might have been Kurt Vonnegut, once wrote that it was too bad nobody had put together a manual for people newly born as to what they might expect from life in the future so they could prepare better for it. Well, 21st Centuries kids is a major contribution to that end. This is a book about children (adolescents actually) but it is definitely not, only a book for adolescents. It is a book that simply, but brilliantly, projects the rapidly emerging scientific technologies of space exploration, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, nanotechnology, cryonics, radical life extension, etc., that make-up the gathering momentum of The Singularity, or that point in this century when humans will have evolved into a new, transhuman, species. This will of course be an event equal in importance to the evolution of Homo-sapiens from Neanderthals, with many more promises, and some perils. It begins simply enough in 2008. A family is on their way to a church Christmas event when there is a tragic automobile accident. Two children who did not survive the accident but who do survive 200 years in cryonic suspension, Avianna, a precocious and determined 12 year old whom every parent would want as a daughter, and her slightly younger brother, Arvyn (Vyff has an alliteration for the letter A) awaken to a new world of the late 21st century, in which all of the far out scientific and technological projects already unfolding have transformed almost everything. Like Mark twain's, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; H G. Well's, The Time Machine; and Edward Bellamy's, Looking Backward; 21st Centuries Kids is a serious text disguised as an enjoyable read. Vyff has also crafted a great story around the solid forecasts of the 20th and 21st centuries leading futurists, RCW Ettinger, Buckminster Fuller, FM 2030, Ray Kurzweil, et al... Herself a leading Transhumanist (the 21st century equivalent of the humanists of the past century), author, educator, and parent, who apparently tested 21st Centuries Kids out on her own kids, who then literally demanded that she publish it for which we can all be thankful. Again, this is not just a kid's book but it is especially important for parents and children seeking a fact-based antidote to the terrifying and destructive future fairy tales youngsters are so often subjected to today in popular media, which overwhelms so many of them with irrational hopelessness and helplessness during the time when they should be dreaming and preparing to "boldly go where no one has gone before." However, since the future will directly affect most grown-ups now alive, including probably many who don't think they will be around to see it, this is an important and useful book for everyone. A word about the author, Shannon Vyff. Shannon is a mot

Hyperdrives, nano-minting, accelerated brains with direct computer interfaces, conversations with dolphins, indefinite lifespan... It may all sound a little far-fetched, but consider the current acceleration of scientific knowledge. This acceleration inevitably leads to exponential growth in technological progress. Now project this 180 years into the future! Shannon Vyff does exactly that. In her novel '21st Century Kids' she pulls the reader straight into the fascinating world of the year 2188. When we get there, we will encounter highly advanced human beings - upgraded to a version 5.0 of the earlier model, so to speak. Does this sound too strange to you? Think twice. Already today, we live in a time of Web 2.0 and the 3.0 version will follow soon. People's lives are improved by products like pacemakers, artificial limps, and cochlear implants also known as bionic ears. So what happens if this trend continues? Not only continues, accelerates? Ray Kurzweil in his highly acclaimed book 'The Singularity is Near' defines the technological singularity as a point in the future when technological advances begin to happen so rapidly that normal humans cannot keep pace. In the fifth of his six epochs of the universe's evolution he foresees the merger of human technology with human intelligence. This is what Shannon Vyff's book is all about. So will we all end up as version 5.0 humans? Not necessarily, but there is a way and the book's plot contains all the hints on how it could be achieved. While Ray Kurzweil established a solid scientific foundation for the expected accelerating changes, the author of '21st Century Kids' brings this scenario to life with two vivid and memorable characters: a girl named Avianna and a boy named Avryn. Both children die in a tragic car accident and are rushed to a hospital where contemporary medicine soon reaches its limits. Normally two death certificates would be signed and the grieving parents would prepare the funeral of their two beloved children. Is there no other way? Well, actually there is. Avianna and Avryn's parents decide to put their children's bodies into cryonic suspension. Advanced vitrification techniques are applied to protect the bodies and the delicate brains. Avianna is the first of the two to awake 180 years later. At first she can't see anything, but hears voices in her head. She is vastly surprised to have survived the terrible accident and it takes her a while to grasp the full significance of what is really happening. Her badly injured body has been repaired by nanorobots. Her fully intact brain - which had not suffered from oxygen deprivation - was being greatly enhanced with ultramodern computer technology. She realizes she can think so fast that the experience of an hour of events barely takes a minute. Talk about quality time! The Internet - now called the grid - can be connected to every brain directly. That way the cerebral cortex can access encyclopedic information or any kind of inform

This is a really good story. Though billed as a kids book, it shows real depth of thought about many future technology issues, including artificial intelligence, human augmentation, cryonics, and personal identity. While much has been written about these topics by others, never before have all these ideas been put together in such an engaging and entertaining form.

Jimmy Adams has written a review of Shannon Vyff's book entitled "21st Century Kids: An Innovative Adventure" which is much better than anything that I can write about the book. I am sharing it here for those interested in the book. ******************************* 21st Century Kids: An Innovative Adventure reviewed by Jimmy Adams BEWARE! Your memory of reading this book could be ERASED! 21st Century Kids is not a fairy-tale for children to read. This book opens up a completely inventive world of what life will be analogous to in the future. This work should be compulsory reading for all transhumanists, cryonicists and people into life extension. The author, Shannon Vyff, wrote about what could possibly occur if suspended for approximately 200 years. Set in the year 2189, the real life protagonists Avianna, Avryn and with the help of Avalyse, tell the progress of their story by their capacity to evolve into the new culture. Reminiscent of other literary classics in the vein of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, this book is a societal exposition. In the form of a chronological account from the future, Vyff describes how trans-civilization developed. This is not an ideal Utopia comparable to the novel by Sir Thomas More. Pollution has damaged the world's ecological system and the civilizations must live in nano-shield spheres for protection, there is also a black market sub-society as well as political factions vying for power. A comparative analysis of this adventure to the classics: The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells, is known to many as a children's classic, but was really about the social political views in the 19th-century. By traveling forward in time, Wells was able to express his views of the world around him during a chaotic period. Vyff similarly tells about a possibly accurate portrayal of the future in an extraordinary story of her children traveling by cryonic suspension into the tranhumanial future. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain created the sub-genre of science fiction when his character, Hank Morgan, transports back into time. This was the first true book of time travel back in time rather then forward in time as The Time Machine. Similarly, Vyff creates a sub-genre for transhumanial literature with 21st Century Kids. Mark Twain was commenting on the existing society of the 19th -century in a satire. Vyff has created a paradigm shift for the 21st-century by traveling forward in time by using cryonics as the transport medium. This work is much superior to Robert A. Heinlein's To Sail beyond the Sunset or The First Immortal by James L. Halperin. This novel is devoid of all the superfluous sex and violence to move a story, yet at the same time is a page-turner all ages find hard to put down. The first chapter begins with a bang! No time to explain the life style of the principal characters, an accident happens very quickly. A bright light