I wonder if cryonauts ever prepare some kind of detailed information packet about their personalities, values, etc. to help a future superintelligence put them back together. It seems like getting a full genome sequence, some personality test data, and maybe some video of you would be very cheap on the scale of current cryonics costs. The genome would be expensive, but prices seem to be falling steadily, so in a few years it might be a trivial expense compared to cryonics.
Does anyone do anything like this?
If the future denizens are capable of restoring a cryogenically frozen person to life they shouldn't need our help with the DNA sequencing. After all, we can do that with fairly good reliability today on mummies and bog men so our Walt Disneys shouldn't be too hard to get a decent sample out of.
The epigenome, on the other hand, is a stickier issue; there's a lot of proteins vital to gene expression which are not going to fair well in either the initial freeze or long-term storage. Once we get reliable sequencing of that I'd say that sort of info would be much closer to what you're thinking of.
In the past, the Cryonics Institute has had a policy that said that they would not accept anyone who is not a member. This has changed. The policy now is that someone who has full legal authority over your body can sign you up after you die. It costs $36,250 to be frozen if you are not signed up, which is more expensive. They also will not do anything until you have been on dry ice for 2 weeks after they have been contacted, so not being a member is more risky.
This is very important news for anyone who is currently cryocrastinating. It means that you can drastically increase your chances of survival without filling out any forms. All you have to do is tell a loved one you want to be frozen upon death, and that you would like them to take responsibility for making sure this happens. This takes literally 30 seconds. Do it now!
This news might also be a reason to not sign up right away, if you think something better (like radical life extension or uploading) will come along in your lifetime. We should discuss this in the comments.
Edit: The general consensus of this discussion is that this is a really bad reason not to sign up for cryonics.