Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Optimism exists on a continuum in between confidence and hope. Let me take these in order.

I am confident that the acceleration and expanding purview of information technology will solve within twenty years the problems that now preoccupy us. -- Consider energy. We are awash in energy (10,000 times more than required to meet all our needs falls on Earth) but we are not very good at capturing it. That will change with the full nanotechnology-based assembly of macro objects at the nano scale, controlled by massively parallel information processes, which will be feasible within twenty years. Even though our energy needs are projected to triple within that time, we'll capture that .0003 of the sunlight needed to meet our energy needs with no use of fossil fuels, using extremely inexpensive, highly efficient, lightweight, nano-engineered solar panels, and we'll store the energy in highly distributed (and therefore safe) nanotechnology-based fuel cells. Solar power is now providing 1 part in 1,000 of our needs, but that percentage is doubling every two years, which means multiplying by 1,000 in twenty years.

Almost all the discussions I've seen about energy and its consequences (such as global warming) fail to consider the ability of future nanotechnology-based solutions to solve this problem. This development will be motivated not just by concern for the environment but also by the $2 trillion we spend annually on energy. This is already a major area of venture funding.

Consider health. As of just recently, we have the tools to reprogram biology. This is also at an early stage but is progressing through the same exponential growth of information technology, which we see in every aspect of biological progress. The amount of genetic data we have sequenced has doubled every year, and the price per base pair has come down commensurately. The first genome cost a billion dollars. The National Institutes of Health is now starting a project to collect a million genomes at $1,000 apiece. We can turn genes off with RNA interference, add new genes (to adults) with new reliable forms of gene therapy, and turn on and off proteins and enzymes at critical stages of disease progression. We are gaining the means to model, simulate, and reprogram disease and aging processes as information processes. In ten years, these technologies will be 1,000 times more powerful than they are today, and it will be a very different world, in terms of our ability to turn off disease and aging. ... more »

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Tuesday, November 13

Invitation to participate in the "Aim of Life" Integral Education Leadership survey

by ronjon on November 13, 2007 07:18PM (PST)

I just received the following request from my friend, Prapanna Smith, principal of the innovative and very successful Integral Elementary School and Rainbow Kids Integral Preschools in La Jolla, a small oceanside suburb of San Diego, California, USA. I can speak personally for Prapanna's skills and integrity. I recommend participating in the survey he describes below. ~ ronjon

Hi Ron,

Can you please post the request below to the SCIY Blog where people will see it and hopefully participate? I tried, but I was not sure how or where to do so.

Thanks.

Prapanna

**********************************************

I am currently working on a Doctorate (Ed.D) in the Joint Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership at UC San Diego and CSU San Marcos. Through some of the research for my dissertation I discovered some really interesting ideas regarding life purpose. In light of Mother's opening in her essay on "The Science of Living" ("An aimless life is always a miserable life. . .") life purpose is a particularly relevant idea in the context of Integral Education research.

Recently I found two interesting surveys on life purpose and sources of meaning in life, which I would like to use as a sort of trial run for the collection and analysis of data. I have uploaded the questions from these surveys to Survey Monkey, a website where one can create, store, and administer research instruments. I am calling this the Aim in Life Survey.

I would be very grateful if we can get as many members of the worldwide Sri Aurobindo community as possible to fill out the survey on-line by going to the link below. The survey consists of six pages and should only take about 15-20 minutes to complete. The survey is completely confidential. My interest in doing this is to validate the survey and then share the findings with anyone here who would be interested in them.

The more participants the better. There are hundreds of people on the SCIY Blog and I need a minimum of 200 respondents to get reliable data. If you take the survey, make sure you complete all six pages and answer all the questions.

If you choose to participate, please click here:

<a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=4i_2fZx0hoAZ7aRGumkXBWPQ_3d_3d">Click Here to take the Aim in Life survey</a>

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thanking everyone in advance,

Prapanna

***************************************************

Prapanna Smith, MAED

Principal, Integral Elementary School

Rainbow Kids Integral Preschool

http://www.IntegralElementary.com

http://www.RainbowKidsSchool.com

Office: 858-450-4321

Cell: 858-204-2096

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