If we can, should we?

Picture from Wikimedia Commons

Picture from Wikimedia Commons

What makes pushing boundaries seem so wrong? Is it the foreign quality of it all or conscience? So many people just say cloning is wrong without actually taking any action – we don’t want to deal with what we don’t understand (Fiester). This is how so many advances have been made. How do you make laws about an issue if you do not understand why there needs to be laws? The line is blurred.

Jurassic Park explores this blurred line. Although, many things in the novel were done illegally. The question is asked why we should not push boundaries if we can. However, with technology, people tend to grow over-confident of their control over the situation. The entire novel has perspective shifts throughout, often switching to the control room as it slowly and then quickly begins to lose all control of the park and the technology that they have created. The security and electric fences also prove to have been pretty tenuous, as everything was hanging on one man, Nedry, who abandoned ship to steal DNA samples, setting off the security systems to do so.

A lot of the genetic sequences used for Jurassic Park were borrowed from other sources. Malcolm makes a comment about how ownership has not truly been taken for the work. There is this recklessness that comes with them not having put in the work to find that knowledge for themselves. “Your doctor Wu does not even know the names of the things he is creating. He cannot be bothered by such details as what the thing is called, let alone what it is.”

You can never truly have ownership over technology you create, unless you do not want it to be used, but then why have you created the technology? Technology, more often than not, is a tool created for the use of others. The creator does not have much control on how that tool is used. Therefore, it was slightly delusional of Hammond to presume he had any ownership or control over the animals that had been created: “But what are you going to do to my animals?” These dinosaurs were not just tools to be used to make money (which was what Hammond wanted), but they were living beings with minds of their own. In the end, not John Hammond or even InGen owned the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs owned the dinosaurs.

Pride caused an illusion of control. In order to anticipate an outcome it is possible that one must let go of the need for control, which truly goes against human nature.

However, with technology, people tend to grow over-confident of their control over the situation. The entire novel has perspective shifts throughout, often switching to the control room as it slowly and then quickly begins to lose all control of the park and the technology that they have created. The security and electric fences also prove to have been pretty tenuous, as everything was hanging on one man, Nedry, who abandoned ship to steal DNA samples, setting off the security systems to do so.

The point of the park was to be a controlled environment. “There is no unauthorized breeding in Jurassic Park” (Spielberg). However, they did not account for the fact that the technology they were creating – a replication of life – did indeed have a life of its own. And a main quality of life is its ability to change.

A lot of the genetic sequences used for Jurassic Park were borrowed from other sources. Malcolm makes a comment about how ownership has not truly been taken for the work. There is this recklessness that comes with them not having put in the work to find that knowledge for themselves: “Your doctor Wu does not even know the names of the things he is creating. He cannot be bothered by such details as what the thing is called, let alone what it it” (Crichton).