What is the NANOVERSE series about (really)?

I wrote Algorithm in 2018. While I didn’t release it until late 2021, the entirety of the first book in the Nanoverse series was written nearly two years before anyone knew what COVID-19 was, before the vaccine/anti-vaxx debate led to imbittered divides and passionate political posturing. I’d recently helped a Ph.D. student I was tutoring formulate a dissertation on posthumanism and transhumanism—a contemporary ideology that imagined (some day) that technology would eventually supplant biology and that human ingenuity would soon usher in a new era, the next stage of human evolution, when death, disease, prejudice, and division would be obsolete. As I was reading the research and the theories on the topic it struck me that very few of the theorists ever considered what might be lost in a world where human creations and technological innovation takes over.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. In fact, I have little tolerance for most conspiracies. This book is not about any tin-foil hat-wearing, fear mongering, conspiracy. It is a response to a philosophical movement in vogue today that places the hope of humanity squarely within the domain of human invention, science, and technology.

I’m not against technology. I’m not anti-science. I do believe, however, that when we place all our hopes on human accomplishments, inventions, and technologies rather than in the human spirit and our connection to earth, to the Divine, and what makes us fundamentally human, we’re likely to find ourselves gravely disappointed.

Historically, we human beings have been incredibly blind to the downside of our ingenuity. We plow headlong toward technological progress with little consideration about how it might impact our relationships—-with each other, with the earth itself, and with whoever we might revere or call “God.”

Consider this. The civilized world now watches in horror, paralyzed to act out of fear of what nuclear weaponry might do, as a tyrant with expansionist aspirations attacks a nation unprovoked. Technology itself is neither morally good nor bad. Enhanced capabilities, however, in the hands of moral agents amplify the implications and consequences of individual, moral acts.

Have we really come to the point where questioning the wisdom of a human invention or technological innovation is now a violation of some kind of sacred code? Nothing made by human hands is infallible. When we ostracize or "cancel” those who are critical of human innovation, are we any better than those medieval zealots who once demanded religious conformity at the cost of burning at the stake? Has human progress, technology, or even government (as our savior), become a religion to many of us? How often do we follow these things with a blind faith, hailing our scientists as if they were priests (taking those who advocate what we’d like to believe the most at face value with little scrutiny while ignoring the scientists with different points ov view), while demanding that others do the same?

Perhaps there is a truth to the myth of old. Have we sunk our teeth into the fruit of knowledge, imagining that we’ve now become gods unto ourselves?

Nanoverse is not anti-technology. If you didn’t read through the series to the final book, I suppose, you could get that idea. It’s not against science or progress. Brian, himself, wrestles with this tension. The Nanoverse series, however, is pro-human. It’s about recognizing that the best of humanity is experienced when we forge deeper connections with each other and the earth than when we distance ourselves from it through our inventions.

Food for thought. We so often sit back and marvel at our own inventions, our accomplishments, and our innovations (regardless of the side effects) while we often remain blind to the wonder of the world around us, the mystery and miracle of human life, itself, and the profundity of the human spirit. Can we truly, every, transcend our biology? Do our accomplishments even hold a candel to the splendor of what is already, naturally, ours? What will we lose if we attempt to discard (or even ignore and devalue) what is natural for the sake of the artificial? Are the limits of the body a flaw, or are they part and parcel of what makes life valuable? Can we truly live, ever, without limits and still find happiness?

Best!

Theo

Here is some food for thought/meditation:

" One touch of nature makes all the world kin. " - William Shakespeare

This is the Good Path - a Meditation by Philip Carr-Gomm

Hallowing Limitation - A Blog by Philip Carr-Gomm

“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” -Wendell Berry

“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” - Wendell Berry