Today is my 39th birthday, and it happens to
coincide with salon.com running my article on nanotechnology
and Kabbalah. Now, perhaps a Jewish mystic would find significance
in the numbers 39 and 10-7-04, but it's all much too complicated for me. Besides, Kabbalists believe you shouldn't study this stuff until after you turn 40.
In any event, I want to thank Andrew Leonard, the Salon editor I worked
with on this piece, for his insight and guidance in helping me bring
out these ideas in, I hope, a way that is understandable to a general
audience. Regular NanoBot readers already know a little about how
science and spirituality can find some common ground. But it's not
easy making that connection between two complicated subjects while
still holding the readers' attention. Andrew proved to be a patient and
able guide.
To access the story, you'll need to subscribe or sit through an ad to
obtain a free day pass. Here's an excerpt:
- The mantra in the nanotech industry is to learn from the mistakes made
in biotechnology and the public rejection of genetically modified
organisms. Partly to blame was a "top-down" attitude taken by a
scientific establishment that was much too self-important to bother
with public attitudes and perceptions. So, consideration of "societal
and ethical implications" is No. 1 on the nanotech industry's list.
However, part of that process involves paying attention to the separate
philosophical and religious societies in the world. Not the abstract
"society" of a scientist's dream -- one that will listen to scientific
explanations and reach "correct" conclusions based on the strength and
logic of their arguments -- but the real society that's out there, the
one that laughs at, or adores, Madonna and wears red strings, the one
that crowds around old barns in rundown villages to gaze at a stain
that they swear is the image of the original Madonna, the one that
drops to its knees and faces Mecca five times a day, or faces toward
Jerusalem every Friday night to welcome the bride of Shabbat. More
here
NanoKabbalah Jihad
Nanotech arrogance will meet the Luddite hammer
NanoKabbalah Consciousness
2 comments:
Happy Birthday, my sweet! Nice work on the Salon article. You're very old.
XXOO,
Your wife
I wish I had an anonymous wife! G_d must have been good to you!
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