Sunday, December 19, 2004

The Dark Tower of Babel


Bio-Babel blockades scientific dialogue (By David Ewing Duncan, San Francisco Chronicle)

    Scientists tend to talk to scientists, business people to business people, and activists to activists. Groups meet and invite representatives from other groups to speak, but they are too often treated as foreigners speaking a different language who seem to say hello when they mean goodbye, or they receive a cordial but smug welcome from roomfuls of partisans who oppose their points of view.

    ... The media, my professional world, are among the worst offenders. Typically, we report new discoveries, new prospective cures and new studies on the risks and dangers of, say, a new drug as either gee whiz or apocalyptic. Magazine covers and television news magazine shows proclaim that a new breakthrough is going to cure cancer or make sex better. Or we're all going to die because some mad scientist is about to unleash a Frankenstein nano-probe. More here

NanoBot Backgrounder
I once was blind, but now I see
'Societal Concerns' vs. Scientific Accuracy
Nano name-calling
Nano Babel
From the Dark Tower of my memory

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