We listened to a talk called "Don't take your DNA to the grave". The idea is to pay to have your blood kept in a special bank so that if your descendants have a need to do so, they can have your DNA looked at when future research uncovers new understandings of DNA and disease.
It is possible to reconstruct your DNA by extracting it from your bones but that is very expensive. When we had our ancestral DNA patterns looked at by the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society, we supplied the DNA with little toothbrushes swabbed inside our cheeks. But our speaker said that for their purposes, blood is better.
Maybe sometime, we will be invited to let our thoughts, our physical gait, the geometric arrangement of our organs, our voice, our histories and memories stored in some form. These patterns and information might be of use to animate robots of the future or to guide an animated film. Family customs, emotional patterns, fingerprints might be of value. When you think of the human body, the human mind, the human emotional life and history, there are many parts to us that might be of value in the future.
Each of us represents a particular intersection of cultures, religions, political and other organizations. We each involve a great deal of information, tone and personality. Much of the information that is in and about us can be stored in letters. Even the DNA is a long sequence of four letters. Someday, the genetic code of me might be stored in multiple places, like email can be. We might be mined in various ways and for various purposes. As valuable and impressive as we are, we don't want to go to waste.
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