For man the emanations of light and heat from the sun were the archetypes of all miraculous power. And then various idols came into the heathen World. Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who las, roused from the slumber on that fiery cough, at their great emperor’s call, as next in worth came singly where he stood on the bare strand, while the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof. The chief were those who from the pit of hell  roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst fix their seats long after next the seat of God, their altars by his altar, gods adored among the nations round, and durst abide God thundering out of Zion, throned between the Cherubim; yea, often placed within his sanctuary itself their shrines, abomination; and with cursed things his holy rites, and solemn feasts profaned, and with their darkness durst affront his light. First Moloch, horrid king besmeared with blood of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears, though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud through for the noise of drums and timbrels loud their children’s cries unheard, that passed through fire to his grim idol. Him the Ammonite worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain, in Argob and in Basan, to the stream of Utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heat of Solomon he led by fraud to build his temple right against the temple of God on that opprobrious hill, and made his grove the pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence and black Gehenna called, the type of hell. Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab’s sons, from Aroer to Nebo, and the wild of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon and Horoanim, Soen’s realm, beyond the flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, and Eleale to the Asphaltic Pool. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim on their march from Nile to do him wnton rites, which cost them woe. Yet thence his lustful pleasures of the flesh he enlarged even to that hill of scandal, by the grove of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate; till good Josiah drove them thence to hell. With these came they, who from the bordering flood of old Euphrates to the brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names of Baalim and Ashtaroth, those male, these feminine. For Spirits when they please can either gender assume, or both; so soft and uncompounded is their essence pure, not tied or manacled with joint or limb, nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, can execute their airy purposes, and works of love or enmity fulfill. For those the race of Israel oft forsook their Living Strength, and unfrequented left his righteous altar, bowing lowly down to bestial gods; for which their heads as low bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear of despicable foes. With these in troop came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; to whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs, in Sion also not unsung, where stood her temple on the offensive mountain, built by that uxorious king, whose heart though large, beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell to idols foul. Once you admit that a man can become one with the sun, it follows that the actions of the one are the actions of the other, that the king himself in his person, will vivify the Earth. Life, prosperity, health—these are the timeless and universal hunger of men. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

When it comes to focused interaction, once a set of participants have avowedly opened themselves up to one another for an engagement, an eye-to-eye ecological huddle tends to be carefully maintained, maximizing the opportunity for participants to monitor one another’s mutual perceivings. The participants turn their minds to the same subject matter and (in the case of talk) their eyes to the same speaker, although of course this single focus of attention can shift within limits from one topic to another from one speaker or target to another. The conversation generally proceeded so that one person talked at a time, and all members in the particular group were attending the same conversation. In this sense, these groups might be said to have a “single focus,” that is, they did not involve a number of conversations proceeding at the same time, as one finds at a cocktail party or in a hotel lobby. The single focus is probably a limiting condition of fundamental importance in the generalizations reported here. To this the caution should be added that the multiple focuses found in places like hotel lobbies would occur simultaneously with unfocused interaction. A shared definition of the situation comes to prevail. This includes agreement concerning perceptual relevancies and irrelevancies, and a “working consensus,” involving a degree of mutual considerateness, sympathy, and a muting of opinion differences. When closeness and sympathy are to be held to a minimum, as when a butler talks to a house guest, or an enlisted man is disciplined by an officer, eye-to-eye communion may be avoided by the subordinate holding his eyes stiffly to the front. An echo of the same factor is to be found even in mediated conversation, where servants are obliged to answer the telephone by saying, “Mrs. Hilton’s residence” instead of “Hello.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Often a group atmosphere develops—what is called ethos. In spite of the auspicious rumours about the Cossacks, perhaps slightly exaggerated, the crowd’s attitude toward the mounted men remains cautious. A horseman sits high above the crowd; his soul is separated from the soul of the demonstrator by the four legs of his beast. A figure at which one must gaze from below always seems more significant, more threatening. The infantry are beside one on the pavement—closer, more accessible. The masses try to get near them, look into their eyes, surround them with their hot breath. A great role is played by women workers in the relations between workers and soldiers. They go up to the cordons more boldly than men, take hold of the rifles, beseech, almost command: “Put down your bayonets—join us.” The soldiers are excited, ashamed, exchange anxious glances, waver; someone makes up one’s mind first, and the bayonets rise guiltily above the shoulders of the advancing crowd. The barrier is opened, a joyous and grateful “Hurrah!” shakes the air. When a group of young intellectual English men or women are talking and joking together wittily and with a touch of light cynicism, there is established among them for the time being a definite tone of appropriate behaviour. Such specific tones of behaviour are in all cases indicative of an ethos. They are expressions of a standardized system of emotional attitudes. In this case the men have temporarily adopted a definite set of sentiments towards the rest of the World, a definite attitude towards reality, and they will joke about subjects which at another time they would treat with seriousness. If one of the men suddenly intrudes a sincere or realist remark it will be received with no enthusiasm—perhaps with a moment’s silence and a slight feeling that the sincere person has committed a solecism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

On another occasion the same group of persons may adopt a different ethos; they may talk realistically and sincerely. Then if the blunderer makes a flippant joke, it will fall flat and feel like a solecism. A “we-rationale” develops, being a sense of the single thing that we the participants are avowedly doing together at the time. Further, minor ceremonies are likely to be employed to mark the termination of the engagement and the entrance and departure of the engagement and the entrance and departure of particular participants (should the encounter have more than two members). These ceremonies, along with the social control exerted during the encounters to keep the participants “in line,” give a kind of ritual closure to the mutual activity sustained in the encounter. An individual will therefore tend to be brough all the way into an ongoing encounter or kept altogether out of it. One well-established way of confirming and consolidating a leave-taking is for the leave-taker to move away physically from the other or others. In places like Midtown Sacramento this can cause a problem when two persons pause for a moment’s sociability and then find that their directions of movement do not diverge sharply. If the two persons walk at a normal pace, they find themselves attempting to close out the encounter while still having easy physical access to each other. Sometimes one individual offers and excuse to break into a run; sometimes, even if it takes one out of one’s way, one may take a path diverging sharply from that taken by one’s erstwhile coparticipant. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Engagements of the conversational kind appear to have, at least in our society, some spatial conventions. A set of individuals caused to sit more than a few feet apart because of the furniture arrangements will find difficulty in maintaining formal talk; those brought within less than a foot and a half of each other will find difficulty in speaking directly to each other, and may talk at an off angle to compensate for the closeness. It appears that American, when standing face to face, stand about arm’s length from each other. When they stand side by side, the distance demanded is much less. When “middle majority Americans” stand closer than this in a face-to-face position they will either gradually separate or come toward each other and begin to emit signs of irritation. However, if they are put in a situation in which they are not required to interact—say on a street car—they can stand quite close, even to the point of making complete contact. The amount of this territory sees to vary culturally. So, there can be a situation where two or three ethnic groups occupy different territories, that is, varying amounts of personal space. For example, put together a Germany (who occupies about half the area of personal space) and a middle class American keeps drifting around to the side, in order not to be insulting, and the German man tries to move around to get face-to-face relationships. You get an actual dance, which very often turns into what is practically a fight. From all of this it follows that among persons arranged in a discussion circle, persons adjacent to each other may tend not to address remarks to each other, except to pass side comments, since a voice full enough to embrace the circle would be too full or the distance between them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

In brief, then, encounters are organized by means of a special set of acts and gestures comprising communication about communicating. There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works (“Hello, do you hear me?”), to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm one’s attention (“Are you listening?” or in Shakespearean diction, “Lend me your ears!”—and on the other end of the wire “Um-hum!). Everyday terms refer to different aspects of encounters. “Cluster,” “knot,” “conversational circle”—all highlight the physical aspects, namely, a set of persons physically close together and facially oriented to one another, their backs toward those who are not participants. “Personal encounter” refers to the unit in terms of the opportunity it provides or enforces for some kind of social intimacy. In the literature, the term “the interaction” is sometimes used to designate either the activity occurring within the cluster at any one moment or the total activity occurring from the moment the cluster forms to the moment at which it officially disbands. And, of course, where spoken messages are exchanged, especially under informal circumstances, the terms “chat,” “a conversation,” or “a talk” are employed. It may be noted that while all participants share equally in the rights and obligations described, there are some rights that may be differentially distributed within an encounter. Thus, in spoken encounters, the right to listen is one shared by all, but the right to be a speaker may be narrowly restricted, as, for example, in stage performances and large public meetings. Similarly, children at the dinner table are sometimes allowed to listen but forbidden to talk; if not forbidden to talk, they may be “helped out” and in this way denied the communication courtesy of being allowed to finish a message for themselves. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

It often seems as if people get a sense of their own importance by antagonizing others at the outset. Therefore, in some engagements, one category of participant may be allowed to say only “Yes, sir,” or “No, sir,” or restricted to the limited signalling that a modulation of applause allows.  In talking with people, please do not begin by discussing the things on which you differ. Begin by emphasizing—and keep emphasizing, if possible, tht you are both striving for the same end and that your only difference is one of method and not of purpose. It took me years and cost me countless thousands of dollars in lost business before I finally learned that it does not pay to argue, that it is much more profitable and much more interesting to look at things from the other person’s viewpoint and try to get that person saying ‘yes.’” Do not tell people they are wrong. Try talking to them and see if you can get them into agreement, but do so gently. One who treads softly goes far. Memory is a strange thing. Everyone has one’s own combination of capacities for memory. One person remembers some things more; another remembers other things better. You cannot say that one is better than the other. Memory may disappear; there are many different degrees of it. Something may be forgotten and then brought up again by special methods, or it may disappear altogether. “Why do some people have a greater facility for playing ball games than others?” There are many different kinds of moving center with different kinds of memory. There is not a single human similar to another human. One can do one thing better; another, another thing. There are thousands of impressions so that the combinations are always different. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

I have spoken several times about the different kinds of humans—no. 1, no. 2, no. 3, and so on. One remembers one kind of impression better; another, another kind. “Does a life consist of memories from one moment to another?” No that is too complicated. You know that there are many different sorts of memory. And memory is passive; you do not use it. Life can be said to be a process. “What can one do to increase one’s memory?” If you remember yourself more, your memory will be better. “Until I came into the system I had a very clear memory of something which happened some time ago. Now, if I recall it, it is just a memory of a memory. Is this due to being a little more awake?” It probably connected with strong identification. When you look at it without identification it becomes fainter and may disappear. “Is complete non-identification self-consciousness?” Identification and self-consciousness are two different sides of the same thing. “Is it of practical use to think of the events of one’s past life when trying to self-remember? I mean, with a view to fixing them for any future recurrence.” No, this is not practical. First it is necessary for you to be sure that future recurrence exists. Secondly, it is necessary for you to be sure of remembering yourself. If you put it to yourself as you did in your question, it will turn into imagination, nothing else. However, if you try first of all to remember yourself without adding anything to it, and then—when you can—also to remember about your past life, and try to find cross-roads; then, in combination, they will be very useful. Only do not think that you can do it; you cannot do it yet. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

“What are cross-roads?” Cross-roads are moments when one can “do.” A moment comes when one can help in this work or not. If an opportunity comes and one misses it, another may not come for a year or even longer. There are periods in ordinary conditions when nothing happens, and then there come cross-roads. All life consists of streets and cross-roads. Recurrence can be useful if one begins to remember and if one begins to change and not go by the same circle each time, but do what one wants and what one thinks better. However, if one does not know about recurrence, or even if one knows and does not do anything, then there is no advantage in it at all. Then, it is generally the same things repeated and repeated. “Am I right in supposing that it is man’s essence which recurs?” Quite right. We know very little about recurrence. Some day we may try to collect what can be taken as reliable in all that is said about recurrence, and see how we can think about it. However, it is only theory. Recurrence is in eternity; it is not the same life. This life ends and time ends. There is a theory, and this system admits the theory, that time can be prolonged. I have no evidence. Think how many attempts to find out about time have been made by spiritualists and others. However, there is no evidence. The easiest way of studying recurrence is by studying children. If we had enough material we could answer may questions. Why, for instance, do strange tendencies appear in children, quite opposed to their surrounding circumstances and quite new to the people who surround them? That happens sometimes, in many different ways. And they may be very strong tendencies that change life and go in quite unexpected directions, when there is nothing in heredity to account for them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

As I have often said, the idea of heredity in man does not work. It is a fantastic idea. It works in dogs and horses but not in man. “Does the question of types come into that?” Yes, but we know nothing about types. At least not enough to speak about them. This is why in most cases it happens that parents do not understand their children and the children do not understand their parents. They never could really understand one another sufficiently or rightly, because they are quite different people, strangers to one another, who have just happened to meet accidentally at a certain station and then go in different directions again. The study of recurrence must begin with the study of children’s minds; particularly before they begin to speak. If children could remember this time, they would remember very interesting things. However, unfortunately, when they begin to speak, they become real children and they forget after six months or a year. It is very seldom that people remember what they thought before that, at a very early age. If they could do so, they would remember themselves such as they were when grown up. They were not children at all; then, later they became children. If they could remember their early mentality, it would be the same mentality as grown-up people have That is what is interesting. Our examples have centered largely on movement (and barriers) in spaces, physical and conceptual—with the exception of our short discussion of reading and writing as technologies of interaction across time. A quite different mechanism also exists. We have examined the tendences of many biological and social systems to assume hierarchical (or “pyramidal” or “inverted tree”) shape. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

We have noticed that the upper layers of such systems typically involve processes that span longer time intervals, while the lower levels are more often involved with processes that run relatively quickly. CEOs and board members concern themselves with the question of what markets should be entered in the coming years, while factory floor supervisors concern themselves with the production schedule for the coming week. A brain may take one or two seconds to compose a sentence, but the nerve cells within one of its many cooperating parts, say the left cerebral cortex, discharge in times measured in milliseconds. The debate remains that this hierarchical arrangement of times scales supports effective governance in a system, which is why it is often seen in armies and bureaucracies. The reason that the slower activity at the upper levels establishes a stable context for faster processes running at lower levels. It helps in providing a social service if the definition of who the client is does not change while you are providing it. Likewise, it helps in taking a defended hilltop if the definition of the enemy does not change while you are attacking it. Hierarchies have the property that every element of the system (but the bottom ones) have several subordinates. So whenever a “superordinate” element acts, it establishes a context that allows its subordinates to act in concert. This is tremendously useful in achieving the benefits of coordination. Napoleon had the same idea when he said, “One bad general is better than two good generals.” In this view, this separation of time scales is so advantageous that we should expect evolution to produce it frequently. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Actions with long time frames should tend to become assigned to positions that govern levels in which actions have shorter time frames. Systems that organize this way will have a competitive advantage, and there should be more of them over time. We stand far back to discern this tendency across a wide range of what we call Complex Adaptive Systems. However, standing close-up to organizational cases shows that the assignment of actions to levels is generally done by the agents within them. If those agents understand the principle, it offers them another opportunity to influence events. One might argue that “in our consumer products business, products now should come and go very rapidly. The CEO should no longer make those decisions for our company. At that level, the concern should be for our long-run reputation with consumers and for the research and development that generates new products. Our reputation should shape our products more than the other way around.” As usual, we do not claim that an argument like this is always right. We do not think that it comes from—and lead to—the right kinds of questions. If you fail to follow through, a straightforward way to make your commitment credible is to agree to a punishment. If your kitchen remodeler gets a large payment upfront, one is tempted to slow down the work. However, a contract that specifies payment linked to the progress of the work and penalty clauses for delay can make it in one’s interest to stick to the schedule. The contract is the commitment device. Actually, it is not quite that simple. Imagine that a dieting man offers to pay $500 to anyone who catches him eating unhealthy food. Every time the man thinks of a dessert, he knows it is just not worth $500. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Do not dismiss this example as incredible; just such a contract was offered by a Mr. Nick Russo—except the amount was $25,000. So, fed up with various weight-loss programs, Mr. Russo decided to take his problem to the public. In addition to going on a 1,000-calorie-a-day diet, he is offering a bounty–$25,000 to the charity of one’s choosing—to anyone who spots him eating in a restaurant. He has peppered local eateries…with “wanted” pictures of himself. However, this contract has a fatal flaw: there is no mechanism to prevent renegotiation. With visions of eclairs dancing in his head, Mr. Russo should argue that under the present contractual agreement, no one will ever get the $25,000 penalty since he never violated the contract. Hence, the contract is worthless. Renegotiation would be in their mutual interest. For example, Mr. Russo might offer to buy a round of drinks in exchange for being released from the contract. The restaurant diners prefer a drink to nothing and let him out of the contract. For the contract approaching to be successful, the party that enforces the action or collects the penalty must have some independent incentive to do so. In the dieting problem, Mr. Russo’s family might also want him to be skinner and thus not be tempted by a mere free drink. The contracting approach is better suited to business dealings. A broken contract typically produces damages, so that the injured party is not willing to give up on the contract for naught. For example, a producer might demand a penalty from a supplier who fails to deliver. The producer is not indifferent about whether the supplier delivers or not. He would rather get his supply than receive the penalty sum. Renegotiating the contract is no longer a mutually attractive option. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

What happens if the supplier tries the dieter’s argument? Suppose he attempts to renegotiate on the grounds that the penalty is so large that the contract will always be honoured and the producer will never receive the penalty. This is just what the producer wants, and hence he is not interested in renegotiation. The contract works because the producers is not solely interested in the penalty; he cares about the actions promised in the contract. It is possible to write contracts with neutral parties as enforcers. A neutral party is someone who does not have any personal interest in whether the contract is upheld. To make personal interest credible, the neutral party must be made to care about whether or not the commitment is kept by creating a reputation effect. In some instances, the contract holder might lose his job if he allows the contract to be rewritten. Another example, in Denver, one rehabilitation center treats wealthy cocaine addicts by having them write a self-incriminating letter which will be made public if they fail random urine analysis. After placing themselves voluntarily in this position, many people will try to buy their way back out of the contract. However, the person who holds the contract will lose his if the contract is rewritten; the center will lose its reputation if it fails to fire employees who allow contract to be rewritten. The moral is that contracts alone cannot overcome the credibility problem. Success requires some additional credibility tool, such as employing parties with independent interests in enforcement or a reputation at stake. In fact, if the reputation effect is strong enough, it may be unnecessary to formalize a contract. This is the sense of a person’s word being his bond. On the other hand, among college professors, there is a saying, “A handshake is good enough between businessmen. However, when your university’s dean promises you something, get it in writing.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

The age of mass democracy was also the age of immense concentrations of power at the level of nation. This concentration reflected the rise of mass-production technology and national markets. Today’s short-run technologies change things. Take a loaf of bread. Baked goods originally came from local bakeries. However, with industrialization, mom-and-pop bakeries were overwhelmed by supermarkets that bought baked goods from giant national companies like Nabisco in the United States of America. Today, surprisingly, many U.S.A. supermarkets, in addition to selling the national brands, have begun to bake on their own premises. We are coming full circle—but on the basis of more sophisticated technology. Photos, once sent to Rochester, New York, to be centrally processed by Kodak, can now be developed and printed on every street corner. Commercial printing, which once required heavy investment and complex machinery, can now be done using small, advanced coping equipment in shops in every neighbourhood. New technologies are thus making local production competitive again. Simultaneously, however, the advanced economy transfers other forms of production to the global level. Cars, computers, and many other products are now no longer made in a single country, but require components and assembly in many nations. These twin changes, one driving production down and the other up, have direct political parallels. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Together they explain why we see pressures for political decentralization in all the high-tech nations, from Japan and the United States of America, across Europe—along with simultaneous attempts to shift power upward to supra-national agencies. The most significant of the latter is the European Community’s drive to re-centralize power at a higher level by creating a single integrated market, along with a single currency and a single central bank. However, even as the EC steamroller attempts to flatten difference and concentrate political and economic decision-making, various regions are taking advantage of its attack on national power from above to launch a parallel attack from below. The single European market offers us a great opportunity to break the centralization of Paris. In fact, the entire Rhone-Alpes region is hooking up with regions outside France—Catalonia, Lombrdy, and Baden Wurttemberg—in pursuit of mutual interests. As the super-symbolic economy spreads, it will create constituencies for radical shifts of power among local, regional, national, and global levels. The “politics of levels” can be expected to split voters into four distinct groupings: “globalists,” “nationalists,” “regionalists,” and “localists.” Each will defend its perceived identity (and its economic interests) with ferocity. Each will seek allies. Each group will attract different financial and industrial supporters, depending on self-interest, but each will also attract talented artists, writers, and intellectuals who will manufacture appropriate ideological rationales for them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

What is more—contrary to conventional opinion—regions and localities, instead of becoming more uniform, are destined to grow more diverse. If you look at the U.S.A as an entity, you make a serious error. Different parts of the United States of America are as different as night and day. One might not go as far to suggest that the United States of America is on its way to becoming a nation of city-states. However, a close look at statistics for the 1980s already shows widening differences between the two coasts, the Midwest, and the oil patch, and between the big urban centers and the suburbs. Whether measures in housing starts, rates of growth, employment levels, investment, or social conditions, these differences are likely to widen further, rather than narrow, under the impact of a new economy that runs counter to the homogenization of the smokestack era. As regions and localities take on their own cultural, technological, and political character, it will be harder for governments to manage economies with the traditional tools of central bank regulations, taxation, and financial controls. Rising or lowering interest rates or setting a new tax rate will produce radically different consequences in different parts of the same country. And as these disparities widen, they may well trigger an explosion of extremist movements demanding regional or local autonomy or actual secession. The bombs are present, waiting to be detonated in al the advanced economies. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

In every nation some regions already regard themselves as economically cheated by the central authorities. Promises to reduce regional differences have delivered little, as any resident of Glasgow will tell you. (The renewal of secessionists sentiment in America has worried the president enough for him to express private fears about the breakup of the United States of America due to the Southern boarder crises, income and inequality, and weak law enforcement.) Canada hangs together by a thread. Apart from economic inequalities, moreover, there are also long-festering linguistic and ethic cells of secession in places like South Tyrol, Brittany, Alsace, Flanders, Catalonia. A untied Western Europe will have to grant increasing regional and local autonomy—or smash all these movements with a steel fist. In Central Europe, so long as the Hapsburgs ruled, in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, hostilities among their German, Italian, Polish, Magyar, Slovak, and Austrian subjects were suppressed (barely) by the central power. Once Hapsburg power disintegrated after World War I, these groups hurled themselves at one another’s throats with a vengeance. The collapse of Soviet power in Central Europe has raised age-old ghosts. Already we see a sharp intensification of the conflict over the Hungarian minority in Romania and the Turks in Bulgaria. Father south, Yugoslavia could break apart as its Serbs, Albanians, Croats, and other nationalities war with one another. And all this ignore the gigantic centrifugal forces that had been threatening to splinter Russia. The smokestack era was the great age of nation-building, which led to central control over small communities, city-states, regions, and provinces. It was this consolidation that made national capitals the centers of enormous state power. The decline of the smokestack era will set loose bone-deep resentments, vast and violent emotional tides, as the locus of power is transferred. In many parts of the World it will multiply extremist groups for whom democracy is a bothersome obstacle, to be destroyed if it stand in the way of their fanatic passions. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

When it comes to working on cells, moving through tissues without leaving a trial of disruption will require devices able to manipulate and direct the motions of cells, and to repair them. Much remains to be learned—and will be easy to learn with nanoscale tools—but today’s knowledge of cells is enough for a start on the problem of how to do surgery on cells. Cell biology is a booming field, even today. Cells can be made to live and grow in laboratory cultures if they are placed in a liquid with suitable nutrients, oxygen, and the rest. Even with today’s crude techniques, much has been learned about how cells respond to different chemicals, to different neighbours, and even to being poked and cut with needles. Conducting a rough sort of surgery on individual cells has been routine for many years in scientific laboratories. Today, researchers can inject new DNA into cells using a tiny needle; small punctures in a cell membrane automatically reseal. However, both these techniques use tools that on a cellular scale are large and clumsy—like doing surgery with an ax or a wrecking ball, instead of a scalpel. Nano-scale tools will enable medical procedures involving delicate surgery on individual cells. Some viral diseases will respond to treatments that destroy viruses in the nose and throat, or in the bloodstream. The flu and common cold are example. Many others would be greatly improved by this, but not eliminated. Al viruses work by injecting their genes into a cell and taking over its molecular machinery, using it to produce more viruses. This is part of what makes viral illnesses so hard to treat—most of the action is performed by the body’s own molecular machines, which cannot be interfered with on a whole basis. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

When the immune system deals with a viral illness, it both attack free virus particles before they enter cells, and attacks infected cells before they can churn out too many more virus particles. Some viruses, though, insert their genes among the genes of the cell, and lay low.  The cell can seem entirely normal to the immune system, for months, or years, until the viral genes are triggered into action and begin the infective process anew. This pattern is responsible for the persistence of viral skin rashes, and for other slow and fast, deadly viruses. These viruses can be eliminated by molecular-level cellular surgery. The required devices could be small enough to fit entirely within the cell, if need be. Calculation imply that molecular sensors, molecular computers, and molecular effectors can be combined into a device small enough to fit easily inside a single cell and powerful enough to repair molecular and structural defects (or to degrade foreign structures such as viruses and bacteria) as rapidly as they accumulate….There is no reason such systems cannot be built and function as designed. Equally well, a cell-surgery device located outside a cell could reach through the membrane with long probes. At the ends of the probes would be tools and sensors along with, perhaps, a small auxiliary computer. These would be able to reach through multiple membranes, unpackage and uncoil DNA, read it, repackage it, and recoil it, “proofreading” the DNA by comparing the sequences in one cell to the sequence of others cells. On reading the genetic sequence spelling out the message of the COVID-19 virus,  molecular-surgery machine could be programmed to respond like an immune machine, destroying the cell. However, it would seem to make more sense simply to cut out the COVID virus genes themselves, and reconnect the ends as they were before infection. By doing this, and killing any viruses found in the cell, the procedure would restore the cell to health. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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