I understand there was an SF panel! featureing Greg Bear as well as Niven and Jerry Pournelle. (Got this from a trade journal.) they were talking about biology and viruses - not the computer kind! according to what i read Pournelle believes a major plague (wiping out 30-50 percent of the population perhaps) is invevitable, while Bear takes the optimistic side and figures we'll cure the common cold. Well plagues don't kill everyone but I think the trauma would cause a generation to lose faith in medicine and perhaps in science itself. We've all been promised long life and taught that mass earlyh death is a thing ofthe past but nature could still strike back at us (or there could be bio-war.) The psychological after effects could take LONGER To recover from t han the physical ones and civilization could have a hard time recovering if massive numbers of people believe progress was all a lie. Bear broguht up "diagnostic toilets" (a cool idea from Slant). I think he puts ihis faith in nanotech, if not drexler's than biotech. Anybody actually see this panel? I dunno. Optimists are the happy ones but pessimists seem to be more often objectively right. Kristin
