It’s hard to prove that people were ignorant, of course, but I think it did bring cryonics up to a lot of people who didn’t know about it. (If nothing else, all the kids and teens watching it—the younger you are, the less time you’ve had to run into the idea.) Some links:
Ngrams 1960-2008, cryonics & Futurama (apparently ‘Futurama’ was a term long before the show? So the ngram is a bit meaningless, though it’s interesting it has surpassed cryonics.)
I’m kind of surprised by how few books have mentioned Futurama in recent years. (Then again, ISTR that Google Ngram Viewer sampled pre-2000 books and post-2000 books in different ways.)
It’s hard to prove that people were ignorant, of course, but I think it did bring cryonics up to a lot of people who didn’t know about it. (If nothing else, all the kids and teens watching it—the younger you are, the less time you’ve had to run into the idea.) Some links:
Futurama hits on Cryonet
‘cryonics’ hits: 535k
‘cryonics AND futurama’: 1,850k
Ngrams 1960-2008, cryonics & Futurama (apparently ‘Futurama’ was a term long before the show? So the ngram is a bit meaningless, though it’s interesting it has surpassed cryonics.)
I’m kind of surprised by how few books have mentioned Futurama in recent years. (Then again, ISTR that Google Ngram Viewer sampled pre-2000 books and post-2000 books in different ways.)