ExSqueeze Me?
Nov. 6th, 2003 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI've never heard of the magazine Resurgence, "the leading international magazine for ecological and spiritual thinking," but their ridiculous broadside against chemistry, of all things, makes me wonder if they're maybe a little too egotistical. Or simply absurd.
The article is entitled Heart of Darkness, and it's about nanotechnology. Calling nanotechnology (which is really just a sub-discipline of chemistry) "grim and frightening," the authors portray those in the discipline as intoxicated pollyanas following their muses to the destruction of us all.
Some tidbits include: "the prevailing western scientific model assumes scientific inquiry to be both a neutral and (paradoxically enough) a positive activity." I was under the assumption that most forms of inquiry, whether scientific or artistic or religious or historical, were primarily positive activities; that adding to human knowledge was better than enjoying ignorance.
But the most precious quote is this one: "one sometimes wonders which century the world just, barely, lived through - surely not the century of chemical, biological and nuclear warfare, global warming, acid rain and Frankenfoods?"
Can anyone name a single person who was harmed by "Frankenfood?" I can point to the billions in India and surrounding countries today who are not starving thanks to the first generation of Frankenfoods. I suppose if they were starving, Resurgence would be livid about "The West" not doing enough, but because they're not starving, that is because the problem doesn't exist, it's not worth commenting on.
Vicious, small-minded, and yes, Luddite. They should embrace the term.
The article is entitled Heart of Darkness, and it's about nanotechnology. Calling nanotechnology (which is really just a sub-discipline of chemistry) "grim and frightening," the authors portray those in the discipline as intoxicated pollyanas following their muses to the destruction of us all.
Some tidbits include: "the prevailing western scientific model assumes scientific inquiry to be both a neutral and (paradoxically enough) a positive activity." I was under the assumption that most forms of inquiry, whether scientific or artistic or religious or historical, were primarily positive activities; that adding to human knowledge was better than enjoying ignorance.
But the most precious quote is this one: "one sometimes wonders which century the world just, barely, lived through - surely not the century of chemical, biological and nuclear warfare, global warming, acid rain and Frankenfoods?"
Can anyone name a single person who was harmed by "Frankenfood?" I can point to the billions in India and surrounding countries today who are not starving thanks to the first generation of Frankenfoods. I suppose if they were starving, Resurgence would be livid about "The West" not doing enough, but because they're not starving, that is because the problem doesn't exist, it's not worth commenting on.
Vicious, small-minded, and yes, Luddite. They should embrace the term.
