In photodocumentary gift I imagined benevolent extraterrestrials recording our history for preservation sake. So that the intriguing tale of our species is not lost.
But there are some even more valuable pieces of information worth of preservation.
Us.
Reductionist view considers the idiosyncratic structure of neural connections to constitute a person. That is if you (theoretically) take the brain apart and put it back together cell by cell so that all the neuron links are restored, you’d get back the same person. One step further, if you obtain information on the whole neural web of a brain, manufacture new neurons and assemble them as prescribed – you’d get the same person.
Optimistic cryonics scenario for revival is to re-warm the body and fix all the problems that caused it to die in the first place. But even if revival of the frozen body will prove to be unfeasible, there remains an option to scan the cell structure and reassemble the body anew, or emulate it in virtual reality. In a sense, cryonics preserves the information in form of the brain and the body themselves. I bet if cell structure scanning (even destructive) were already technically feasible it would have been among cryopreservation options besides current whole-body and head-only. But only a few people have heard about cryonics and many of those dismiss it without consideration. So when people die, the brains rot and information is lost.
In a perfect world the information which is us is never lost. My dream is that the same benevolent aliens unobtrusively scan people, either once before death, or from time to time, and preserve the data. So that when we as a species are grown up enough to save on our own everyone then alive, they would give us back all those whom we didn’t save, either because we couldn’t, as centuries ago, or just didn’t, because didn’t see that as a priority for some perverted reason.