From Nagasaki and Nuremberg to Osaka

Welcome to Momento. Today we launch this weekly space for reflection, storytelling, and inquiry.

Each month, I’ll explore a theme close to my heart—rooted in personal history, curiosity, or both.

I’ll also share news of my essays published elsewhere, extending these conversations into broader arenas.

August’s Monthly Theme: War and Peace

This month, we will reflect on sites marked by conflict and remembrance—Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Nuremberg, Auschwitz, and the World War I trenches.

These places are more than historical landmarks to me. They are emotional landscapes transcending facts and figures that I’ve encountered through travel, museum visits and lived experience.

My essays this month examine how conflict scars the human body, burdens the conscience, and tests our shared humanity—and how technology sits at the heart of these intersections.

Why I Chose This Theme

• I have familial and cultural ties to Nagasaki, Japan. This August marks the 80th anniversary of the first atomic bombs used in war.

• Visiting historical museums is always my top activity when traveling.

• As someone who writes and teaches in bioethics and technology ethics, I return to one question: If technology cannot alleviate, reduce, or prevent suffering, violence, or war, what moral purpose does it serve?

New Publication: Between Ishiguros (August 5th, 2025)

My Hastings Bioethics Forum essay goes live today! To access the full article, click here.

In “Between Ishiguros,” I explore Hiroshi Ishiguro’s “Future of Life” pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka.

The AI-powered androids at Osaka’s Expo 2025 unsettle our assumptions about personhood, companionship, and moral agency.

Navigating this ethical frontier at the collision point between identity and empathy I ask: in an age of AI humanoids, what remains irreducibly human?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and questions as we embark on this journey together.