[Fis] Fwd: Abstract--Electronic Symbiosis—Lessons from Bacteria

Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
Thu Feb 25 20:41:17 CET 2021


Dear Plamen and Colleagues,

Thanks for the further reflection. I think we should re-read Ortega y 
Gasset's "The Revolt of the Masses". He was reacting to the enormous 
changes of communication and ways of life in his time (late 20s early 
30s) and the unbearable pressure of the "masses" in the intellectual 
life of his time. My particular contention is that  in every successful 
industrial revolution (the ones that are able to duplicate the material 
wealth of society) the cultural capital passed to the new generation is 
literally halved. As Borges put, our memory limits are everywhere, and 
we always are caught into a big "thought collective" that forces us to 
concentrate in a  series of new foci that partially (or totally) 
obliterate the previous ones. Then, culture is not accumulative, but 
selective. And nowadays we are in the hands of those very, very few, new 
monopolists that control the means of communication and particularly the 
new social networks--including the new wave of authoritarian regimes in 
more countries. For several reasons, the new generations look more 
ignorant, more susceptible of media-manipulation, and more e-activists.
Maybe I (we) do not like that because I (we) belong to a different 
"caravan" --as Ortega was saying, each generation lives into its own 
separate "caravan"... and occasionally crosses with the others.

Best regards
--Pedro

El 23/02/2021 a las 23:14, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov escribió:
> Thank you, Pedro.
>
> Indeed the key question for me right now - after sharing these earlier 
> thoughts - is to which extent science and our free will to explore the 
> riddles of the universe are "influenced"  and "moderated", yes - even 
> "censured" and "re-directed",  by some external interested forces in 
> modern days, much more than, say 100 years ago, by religious groups 
> and movements? In other words, I question the current state of 
> "initial and boundary conditions" for developing a free thought and 
> will in human beings from the current active generation (20-40 years 
> old) as being reshaped, or even recreated - without considering myself 
> as being a QAnon or another conspiracy group fan - under the direction 
> of some external forces - not necessarily aliens - that we currently 
> ignore. We should not forget that a great deal of the active memory of 
> our human society died out untimely with unfinished jobs to transfer 
> their knowledge to the next generations, because of SARS-nCOV-2. What 
> do you think about this? What is coming next?
>
> Best,
>
> Plamen
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 2:21 PM Pedro C. Marijuan 
> <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es <mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>> wrote:
>
>     Dear All,
>
>     Below a couple of late messages from Plamen exchanged offline (due
>     to the list limitation).
>     In my view, the relationship of technology with utopianism appears
>     quite frequently, and it is not unsound, but science needs to be
>     far more careful.
>     From utopia to dystopia there are so very few steps...
>
>     --Pedro
>
>
>     -------- Mensaje reenviado
>     ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>     Asunto: 	Re: [covid-19-therapy] Fwd: [Fis] Abstract--Electronic
>     Symbiosis—Lessons from Bacteria
>     Fecha: 	Fri, 19 Feb 2021 13:52:18 +0100
>     De: 	Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <plamen.l.simeonov at gmail.com>
>     <mailto:plamen.l.simeonov at gmail.com>
>     Para: 	Covid-19 Therapy <covid-19-therapy at googlegroups.com>
>     <mailto:covid-19-therapy at googlegroups.com>
>     CC: 	Howard Bloom <howlbloom at aol.com> <mailto:howlbloom at aol.com>,
>     Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>
>     <mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>
>
>
>
>     Thank you, Otto. I was in the mood to write this short appeal
>     today. When I joined the telco and media industry away from the
>     self-pity academia in the mid 1990ies, I felt inspired by the fall
>     of the Berlin Wall and the hope that the dreams of John Lennon and
>     Martin Luther King are about to become reality next. I was not
>     motivated by some weird opportunity to chase "likes" by sharing
>     narcissistic experiences with sensation greedy fellows around the
>     world in the social media as this became normal today. I told
>     myself that the next step for humanity is to end all wars and go
>     into deep space. The only problem I realized at that time was the
>     lack of communication, which made us feel so damned alone in the
>     universe. That's why I fully embraced the development of the
>     internet and all related technologies that would help us to go out
>     in the wild cosmos and civilize it one day. I never thought that
>     the same kind of technology will be used to fabricate fake news,
>     selfish social networks, depressive  movies and oppressive news
>     that serve corporations to create fears and inflate their profits.
>     Just watch who was the winner of the COVID-19 pandemic according
>     to the stock exchange numbers in 2020. What a waste of mind
>     energy! It is time to change something, away from these deep
>     psychosocial crises we experience today.
>
>     Yours,
>
>     Plamen
>     ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     On Friday, February 19, 2021, 11:19:28 AM GMT+1, Dr. Plamen L.
>     Simeonov <plamen.l.simeonov at gmail.com
>     <mailto:plamen.l.simeonov at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     Yes, John.
>     I have seen the movie. Despite all these dark and apocalyptic
>     visions of the future which became popular in the past 40 years, I
>     recall another earlier era of sci-fi which was also challenging
>     but more positively motivated by the spirit of adventure and the
>     eagerness to explore the riddles of the universe. Its driver was
>     the Apollo space program and the gentlemen's competition in space
>     between the Russians and the Americans which has motivated
>     millions of people around the world including myself despite the
>     Cold War. At that time the world was at the edge of
>     self-destruction (1983, the Pershing II program in West Germany)
>     and there was still more hope than now with COVID-19 and the US
>     elections, which are about to become a permanent topic.
>
>     Yesterday, with the launch of the new NASA Perseverance rover on
>     Mars and the transmission of the images from the red planet I was
>     able to feel again a bit of this positive spirit of hope and
>     excitement in some of my peers who were not distracted by the
>     everyday news about gruesome political wars that  media overexpose
>     to the public and charges the minds with negative energy and
>     expectations. Where is the science in the news? I do hope that a
>     new era of curiosity and adventure is opening now. Maybe this is
>     the beam of light - Perseverance - that Howard meant in his former
>     post at FIS about the exciting new worlds and paradises that wait
>     to be explored by us, human beings. Because this is our destiny,
>     as Carl Sagan earlier and Michio Kaku recently said. We need
>     thousands and millions of scientists, teachers and professors like
>     them to push this planet in a different direction. Politicians and
>     ((a)social) media are not the heroes of our time. Go to the NASA
>     page and see what amazing technology we have to change the world
>     for the good. We should be able to address this quality of man.
>     May Howard Bloom's prophecy become true. What we think is becoming
>     reality. Changing the way of thinking is essential for the
>     survival of an intelligent species.
>
>     Have a nice day.
>
>     Best!
>
>     Plamen
>
>     I put this email in this forum, because Pedro is limiting the
>     number of contributions to FIS, which is OK.
>     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>     <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
>     	Libre de virus. www.avast.com
>     <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
>
>
>     <#m_4943141530610390988_DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Fis mailing list
>     Fis at listas.unizar.es <mailto:Fis at listas.unizar.es>
>     http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>     ----------
>     INFORMACIÓN SOBRE PROTECCIÓN DE DATOS DE CARÁCTER PERSONAL
>
>     Ud. recibe este correo por pertenecer a una lista de correo
>     gestionada por la Universidad de Zaragoza.
>     Puede encontrar toda la información sobre como tratamos sus datos
>     en el siguiente enlace:
>     https://sicuz.unizar.es/informacion-sobre-proteccion-de-datos-de-caracter-personal-en-listas
>     Recuerde que si está suscrito a una lista voluntaria Ud. puede
>     darse de baja desde la propia aplicación en el momento en que lo
>     desee.
>     http://listas.unizar.es
>     ----------
>

-- 
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group

pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------



-- 
El software de antivirus Avast ha analizado este correo electrónico en busca de virus.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20210225/f578e499/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the Fis mailing list