Critical Annotated Webliography - Q.3

Q3. Frankenstein continues to occupy the popular imagination as a monstrous scientist. Analyse some of the ways in which Frankenstein haunts discussion of recent technologies.

Victor Frankenstein, as a scientist who created the monster Frankenstein, has the unrealistic and absurd imagination on the biotechnology. It is hard to imagine a dead body with separate organs can have vitality through the galvanization. Recent technologies like the genetic engineering, human cloning and other scientific contributions are inspired by this monstrous idea. However, Victor’s failure of controlling Frankenstein has raised people’s attention on the fear of technology, alerting them the dangerous lurking in the shadow of technology.

First, it is needed to understand what the fear is. The article Technophobia: A disease in disguise gives a clear concept of how people are getting “fear of technology or technological devices”. The author has used daily examples to illustrate the inseparability between human and technologies, such as the frequent use of computer and pagers. Human will feel bushed with technology when they cannot follow the rapid development of technologies. Their psychology will be imbalanced and the human nature will be altered after suffering from technophobia. The author has also concisely listed out some symptoms of technophobia, including that people will find excuses the needless of new technologies and argue against the transformation of technologies.

To have a further discussion on fear, Daniel Chandler’s article Fear of losing control particularly calls in question on the position between human and technologies as well as emphasizes the seriousness on the outcome of losing control of technologies. He has mentioned the relationship between human and machine is being confused. The reason human feel fear is from the “possible harm that from machinery out of control”, which has “double aspect of good/harm”, just like fire can give warm to people but burn them as well. Chandler has used some movies to give concrete explanation on the loss of control. For example, the robots appeared in the film Westworld are “out of control for no apparent reason”. In A Space Odyssey, the computer has some abnormal behaviors that it has killed the human under its own decision making. From these examples Chandler clearly gives rise to the concern of the future technology.

Alisa Burns has elaborated the risks of technology in her article Frankenstein of the Future. Unlike Chandler’s view, Burns raises that the dangerous part of technology is the scientist blindly requests for “bring to life” as well as creates something that can threat the whole universe without careful consideration. She has used Victor Frankenstein to explain technologies are something with unexpected and uncontrolled consequences. But the most fearsome Burns emphasizes is that the machines “are indicating the ability to learn”. She mentions Artificial Intelligence, the system that can imitate human thinking, understand what people talk about and compete with human, to warn that scientists underestimate the system. She uses the movie Matrix as an example, illustrating the serious consequence of artificial intelligence transcend human intelligence, which the former one takes control of the human at the end.

The article Stem Cells and Human Cloning: The Postmodern Prometheus gives a positive perspective on providing a useful background information of the evolvement of human reproduction and the process of technological fertilization of human egg cells, which proves that science can achieve the “Frankenstein-like event”. The discovery of molecular biology helps investigation on cell development and study the possibility between fertilized egg and human body cell. The less unlikeness between body cell and fertilized egg push biotechnology to an upper level. The article then cites the instance of Louise Brown, the first baby who was born via in vitro fertilization, to give a strong support on assisted reproduction. In further investigation, the transgenic food and animals are invented as well. The article also lists out different arguments on assisted production and human production. For example, Professor Leon Kass is against assisted reproduction as children become artifacts.

Dave Weldon’s perspective is counter to human cloning. In his article Why Human Cloning Must Be Banned Now, it gives a clear explanation on the violation of human cloning. He has noted the reasons of banning research and reproductive cloning in ethical angle. First, research cloning may need to sacrifice the people live in order to see the result, which is immoral. Second, human is being treated as a tool to help the scientist to accomplish their experiment, which is unethical as well. Finally, the scientists will take advantage of women in the research cloning process. Since those scientists need a great number of women’s eggs for creating cloned embryos, the injection of superovulatory drugs into women’s bodies are needed. Infertile will be the extreme side effect. Weldon’s fear comes from these predictable outcomes. Besides, he also provides biological explanation on the danger of human cloning. He mentioned that some “undetectable but harmful genetic abnormalities” will torment the human clones, which do not have possible method to solve this problem in the present. To directly solve the problem, Weldon’s suggestion on terminating “the creation of cloned embryos” is useful for considering the possible solution on forbidding the reproductive cloning in order to relieve the fear.

The article Will Frankenfood Save the Planet? is helpful to make argument on biotechnology in different aspects. The author Jonathan Rauch first uses examples to illustrate the economic and technological advantages of transgenic crops for those farmers, helping them to have huge production and become affordable on the massive market demand. “The selective transfer of genes from one organism to another” allows the scientists cultivate the crops without the affection of soil quality or plants’ habit. Rauch then uses statistics to points out the environmental damage made by the transgenic crops, especially the habitat destruction. Because of the profitability, the farmers extended their farmland by felling the forest. The effect is indirect but powerful.

Bouneith Inejnema has used biological angle to expose the dangers of genetically-modified (GM) food by using research in his article Frankenstein Foods Cause organ Abnormalities. He has stated the current situation inside the market. With the massive production of GM food, the consumers cannot make differentiation between the products. Although GM producers, like Monsanto, declare that GM food do not endanger human health, a research have exposed the diverse outcome after eating it. The report has presented that “rats fed genetically modified com had smaller kidneys and variation in their blood composition”, which supposed to happen on human body as well. The author also mentioned that those foods cannot be safe even they have been tested on animals. The fear showing in here related to the harm of human health brought by technology.

From the articles, it can see the interrelation between Frankenstein, human and technology. It is true that science and technology have significant contribution on biotechnological development. However, the negative outcome of Frankenstein food and human cloning has raised people’s attention on the Frankenstein myth, elaborating the fear of technology and its loss of control. Apart from the biotechnological issues, the ethical problem is also an important aspect in the discussion. Excessive invention and dependence on technology will unbalance the nature and artificial practice. It is essential for the human to utilize the technology appropriately.

References:

Alisa Burns “Frankenstein of the Future”. http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/frank.comment4.html (accessed 26 February 2009)

Bouneith Inejnema “Frankenstein Foods Cause organ Abnormalities”. http://www.theearthcenter.org/ssgmfoodsorgans.html (accessed 25 February 2009)

Daniel Chandler “Fear of losing control”. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/SF/sf04.html (accessed 26 February 2009)

Dave Weldon “Why Human Cloning Must Be Banned Now”. http://www.cbhd.org/resources/cloning/weldon_2002-spring.htm (accessed 26 February 2009)

Jonathan Rauch “Will Frankenfood Save the Planet?”. http://www.uri.edu/mind/Frankenfood%202%20October%202003%20Atlantic%20Monthly.pdf (accessed 25 February 2009)

Samrat Ray (2008) “Technophobia: A disease in disguise”. http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=148360 (accessed 26 February 2009)

“Stem Cells and Human Cloning: The Postmodern Prometheus”. http://biology.kenyon.edu/courses/biol114/Chap14/clone.html (accessed 25 February 2009)