Good night bicycle man
When historians of the future come to enumerate the seminal technological innovations of the twentieth century, they could do worse than the following list: the airplane, the digital computer, the atomic bomb and LSD.
Today the discoverer of LSD, Albert Hofmann, passed away at the age of 102 at his home in Basel, Switzerland. I remember seeing him when he came to Los Angeles in 1988. He spoke at an event called “Albert Hofmann in America,” marking the 50th anniversary of the initial synthesis of the drug. It was an event attended by virtually everyone of note in the psychedelic movement from the sixties forward, save Tim Leary, who was, I guess, persona non grata. Hofmann spoke briefly that evening, a humble, eloquent man still wrestling with the impact of what he had done. I have the privilege of owning a signed copy of his book “LSD: My Problem Child.”
It’s interesting that of these four technologies, his is the one to have been considered so dangerous that, after a brief period, further formal research into the area was aggressively and effectively suppressed on a global basis.
Scarier than nukes. Think about it.