ABSTRACT
The best visions of what is possible for human life today actually seem to challenge the notion that our mortality is a boundary that people cannot cross. Yet the appeal of Dickens's opening words to A Tale of Two Cities—words written in a time and a society that people today tend to see as particularly optimistic—is that they describe what every man and every woman has at some time known to be true. The structural lethargy of large-scale social organizations inhibits them from the kinds of rapid adaptations that would let them respond more effectively to the challenges of our time, and they may be ill equipped to prevent the worst from happening. Flagrant violations of human rights persist in the face of the worldwide public knowledge of them that the modern network of communication has achieved. The technological developments that today promise us the best of times are also the ones that can provide the very worst.
