Thanks, Al, for this marvelous and thought provoking article. What's left out for me is politics. And even as I write that I'm not sure how to explain it. First of all, Robinson's _Ministry of the Future_ is about public policy and doing politics -- that's what saves the world -- and yes, politics and public policy are vital to community, but it rarely gets puts so baldly (and wonderfully) on the table as Robinson serves it up. The other is the politics/policy questions of who gets to play in these big questions. Fermi may have asked this question but he and Edward Teller (that big jerk -- sorry, it slipped out) had the luxury of doing that. Because after all they were bomb makers. What if people (meaning, um, women) like Lise Meitner was in on the discussion of the paradox and the development of public policy (about, say nukes). First she discovers nuclear fission, then as a Jewish woman she flees the Nazi's to Sweden -- and then she dares to be a pacifist -- when Roosevelt reached for her help she said, " “I will have nothing to do with a bomb." Would all of the "brave" scientists had her vision. YIPES! I'm going on and on. I love this piece. Extremely thought-provoking, obviously.
