entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

Funny, I was going to say "it sounds like crackpottery, but if Smolin says it's a good theory worth investigating, it probably is." Not that I think all of Smolin's ideas are right (indeed, I barely understand any of them) but he's certainly competent to distinguish crackpots from people with good, out-of-the-mainstream ideas.

Strings are not completely untestable.