Sometime I wonder where the human imagination side of community like SBB stem from. Despite the usual need for raising money and starting businesses, I think our human motivations are often more irrational and fantastical than we'd like to pretend - even for tech industry meetings.
Maybe our age's collective imagination is still fixated on bringing back 1964 New York World's Fair, and is still haunted by the battles of that age. Apparently behind the stereotypical gleaming futurism was a pretty wild tug of war between newly emergent corporate powers (GE at its heyday, for example) and the US government.
For people raised on healthy diet of David and Goliath story of scrappy entrepreneurs (of nuclear bomb building GE) vs lumbering special interest (the US government), current dismantling of post-WWII scientific establishment in favor of venture capital and private equity might not be a 'bad thing'.
It's a bit saddening that what's supposed to be the more daring and imaginative side of this country seems to be forever stuck on 1960's on repeat. One would think each generation needs to fight and dream their own future, not aspire to become like their parents.
That's an interesting comment about the futurism of the New York World's Fair, with its glorious vision of a 'Jetsons'-style future. I went to that fair. I was 12. I still remember it.
Two parts of the future that the World's Fair didn't envision, somehow, were Beatles/hippies/pot&LSD/summer-of-love, AND, Vietnam. Oh well. The reactionary anti-science mania taking over the country feels more like the 50's red scare to me than to the 60's when, for a while, the progressive impulse seemed to be stronger than the reactionary one.
Your observation about "current dismantling of post-WWII scientific establishment in favor of venture capital and private equity" is spot on, at least if you judge by the vibe I picked up at SBB. Part two of this essay is going to include a longer discussion of that theme.
Thanks for writing, and, as always, for any love you can give to SFIO! by way of bluesky or whatever.
Something happened to my previous attempt to comment, so I'll try again.
Unfamiliar with Warren Zevon’s song “I was in the house when the house burned down”. But the title did remind me of an anecdote.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks tells the story of a patient he treated. Firemen had rescued the guy from his burning home, where they found him lying calmly in bed. Asked him how the fire had started. Guy said said, "I don't know. The bed was already smoking when I got in it."
Looking forward to the next installment. Among English majors there's a whole sub genre of comic novels about going to the MLA convention.
Guess you heard that Timothy Snyder has left Yale to move to Toronto. Probably prescient.
Well, there's a firefighter story for you, all right. I once met a firefighter in Worcester who told me about how he went into a fire on the top floor of a three-decker ahead of the hose. Which is a good way to get yourself killed of course, but leave that aside for a minute. He was looking for people to rescue. The apartment was empty, but a mattress was smoldering & starting to flame. Not having a hose, he crawled into the kitchen, opened the fridge, found a gallon of milk, crawled back into the bedroom & extinguished the fire with that.
I intend no disrepect to English majors or MLA conventions, but I feel quite strongly that the wanton dismantling of the scientific infrastructure of the United States of America, which has been thoughtfully nourished since the end of WW2 and improved the lives of billions of people is considerably more consequential than some overwrought navel-gazing at the convention of the Modern Language Association.
I did hear that Snyder left Yale, and Fred bless him. And may Fred bless any others who leave in order to fight the good fight from exile.
I have a friend that I stay in touch with, a little, through Facebook messenger. He's forever telling me that my Sundman figures it out! writing is too fancy-pants, self-induldgent, whatever. He insists that I should avoid long sentences, especially those with lots of subordinate clauses & so forth. But the thing is, he virtually never engages with the subject matter of my posts. I finally had to say, Since you don't care about what I'm writing about, and I don't care about your critique of my way of writing, why don't you do us both a favor & unsubscribe?
I'm not saying that your comment is akin to my Facebook friend's, but I confess that so far nobody — and in particular nobody in the synthetic biology community, or in any part of science, for that matter — has had anything to say about our house of science being on fire. Oh well. Le sigh, as they say in Paree.
Agree about navel gazing. Would just say, by way of excuse, that the MLA novels were all written in a different historical epoch, i.e., more than 100 days ago.
That gets into the question of periodicization (a word my spell checker does not acknowledge). Generally, people fail to realize that a particular day they have experienced was a day when the world changed - until later. That's what makes Snyder unusually prescient. Like certain people who left Germland in 1933. The calm ones who lingered mostly met a different fate.
What I can't figure out is why your post, which is so spot-on (needless to say), has not sparked reactions from the volunteer fire-fighting cohort. Most Murrkns seem to be reacting to the news of the day the way the guy in bed did. At least, that's how it looks from Most Cow.
Thank you for another fun read!
Sometime I wonder where the human imagination side of community like SBB stem from. Despite the usual need for raising money and starting businesses, I think our human motivations are often more irrational and fantastical than we'd like to pretend - even for tech industry meetings.
Maybe our age's collective imagination is still fixated on bringing back 1964 New York World's Fair, and is still haunted by the battles of that age. Apparently behind the stereotypical gleaming futurism was a pretty wild tug of war between newly emergent corporate powers (GE at its heyday, for example) and the US government.
For people raised on healthy diet of David and Goliath story of scrappy entrepreneurs (of nuclear bomb building GE) vs lumbering special interest (the US government), current dismantling of post-WWII scientific establishment in favor of venture capital and private equity might not be a 'bad thing'.
It's a bit saddening that what's supposed to be the more daring and imaginative side of this country seems to be forever stuck on 1960's on repeat. One would think each generation needs to fight and dream their own future, not aspire to become like their parents.
Editing to add - also looking forward to part 2!
Thank you, Sung won Lim.
That's an interesting comment about the futurism of the New York World's Fair, with its glorious vision of a 'Jetsons'-style future. I went to that fair. I was 12. I still remember it.
Two parts of the future that the World's Fair didn't envision, somehow, were Beatles/hippies/pot&LSD/summer-of-love, AND, Vietnam. Oh well. The reactionary anti-science mania taking over the country feels more like the 50's red scare to me than to the 60's when, for a while, the progressive impulse seemed to be stronger than the reactionary one.
Your observation about "current dismantling of post-WWII scientific establishment in favor of venture capital and private equity" is spot on, at least if you judge by the vibe I picked up at SBB. Part two of this essay is going to include a longer discussion of that theme.
Thanks for writing, and, as always, for any love you can give to SFIO! by way of bluesky or whatever.
Something happened to my previous attempt to comment, so I'll try again.
Unfamiliar with Warren Zevon’s song “I was in the house when the house burned down”. But the title did remind me of an anecdote.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks tells the story of a patient he treated. Firemen had rescued the guy from his burning home, where they found him lying calmly in bed. Asked him how the fire had started. Guy said said, "I don't know. The bed was already smoking when I got in it."
Looking forward to the next installment. Among English majors there's a whole sub genre of comic novels about going to the MLA convention.
Guess you heard that Timothy Snyder has left Yale to move to Toronto. Probably prescient.
Well, there's a firefighter story for you, all right. I once met a firefighter in Worcester who told me about how he went into a fire on the top floor of a three-decker ahead of the hose. Which is a good way to get yourself killed of course, but leave that aside for a minute. He was looking for people to rescue. The apartment was empty, but a mattress was smoldering & starting to flame. Not having a hose, he crawled into the kitchen, opened the fridge, found a gallon of milk, crawled back into the bedroom & extinguished the fire with that.
I intend no disrepect to English majors or MLA conventions, but I feel quite strongly that the wanton dismantling of the scientific infrastructure of the United States of America, which has been thoughtfully nourished since the end of WW2 and improved the lives of billions of people is considerably more consequential than some overwrought navel-gazing at the convention of the Modern Language Association.
I did hear that Snyder left Yale, and Fred bless him. And may Fred bless any others who leave in order to fight the good fight from exile.
I have a friend that I stay in touch with, a little, through Facebook messenger. He's forever telling me that my Sundman figures it out! writing is too fancy-pants, self-induldgent, whatever. He insists that I should avoid long sentences, especially those with lots of subordinate clauses & so forth. But the thing is, he virtually never engages with the subject matter of my posts. I finally had to say, Since you don't care about what I'm writing about, and I don't care about your critique of my way of writing, why don't you do us both a favor & unsubscribe?
I'm not saying that your comment is akin to my Facebook friend's, but I confess that so far nobody — and in particular nobody in the synthetic biology community, or in any part of science, for that matter — has had anything to say about our house of science being on fire. Oh well. Le sigh, as they say in Paree.
Agree about navel gazing. Would just say, by way of excuse, that the MLA novels were all written in a different historical epoch, i.e., more than 100 days ago.
That gets into the question of periodicization (a word my spell checker does not acknowledge). Generally, people fail to realize that a particular day they have experienced was a day when the world changed - until later. That's what makes Snyder unusually prescient. Like certain people who left Germland in 1933. The calm ones who lingered mostly met a different fate.
What I can't figure out is why your post, which is so spot-on (needless to say), has not sparked reactions from the volunteer fire-fighting cohort. Most Murrkns seem to be reacting to the news of the day the way the guy in bed did. At least, that's how it looks from Most Cow.
That is the first I've heard of that quote from Sagan. It is *really* good.