From Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies by Andrew Maynard
“God help us, we’re in the hands of engineers!”
—Dr. Ian Malcolm
I was a newly minted PhD when I first saw Jurassic Park. It
was June 1993, and my wife and I were beginning to enjoy our
newfound freedom, after years of too much study and too little
money. I must confess that we weren’t dinosaur geeks. But there
was something about the hype surrounding the movie that hooked
us. Plus, we fancied a night out.
That summer, dinosaurs ruled the world. Wherever you looked,
there were dinosaurs. Dinosaur books, dinosaur parks, dinosaurs on
TV, dinosaur-obsessed kids. Jurassic Park seemingly tapped into a
dinosaur-obsessed seam buried deep within the human psyche. This
was helped along, of course, by the groundbreaking special effects
the movie pioneered. Even now, there’s a visceral realism to the
blended physical models and computer-generated images that brings
these near-mythical creatures to life in the movie.
This is a large part of the appeal of Jurassic Park. There’s something
awe-inspiring—awe-full in the true sense of the word—about
these “terrible lizards” that lived millions of years ago, and that are
utterly alien to today’s world. This sense of awe runs deep through
the movie. Listening to John Williams’ triumphant theme music,
it doesn’t take much to realize that under the gloss of danger and
horror, Jurassic Park is at heart a celebration of the might and
majesty of the natural world.
Jurassic Park is unabashedly a movie about dinosaurs. But it’s also
a movie about greed, ambition, genetic engineering, and human
folly—all rich pickings for thinking about the future, and what could
possibly go wrong.
Jurassic Park opens at a scientific dig in Montana, where
paleontologists Alan Grant (played by Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler
(Laura Dern) are leading a team excavating dinosaur fossils. Just
as the team discovers the fossilized skeleton of a velociraptor,
a dinosaur that Grant is particularly enamored with, the dig is
interrupted by the charming, mega-rich, and, as it turns out, rather
manipulative John Hammond (Richard Attenborough). As well as
being founder of International Genetic Technologies Incorporated
(InGen for short), Hammond has also been backstopping Grant and
Sattler’s digs. On arriving, he wastes no time offering them further
funding in exchange for a quick weekend mini-break to his latest
and greatest masterpiece, just off the coast of Costa Rica.
We quickly learn that, beneath the charm, Hammond is fighting for
the future of his company and his dream of building the ultimate
tourist attraction. There’s been an unfortunate incident between a
worker and one of his park’s exhibits, and his investors are getting
cold feet. What he needs is a couple of respected scientists to give
him their full and unqualified stamp of approval, which he’s sure
they will, once they see the wonders of his “Jurassic Park.”
Grant and Sattler agree to the jaunt, in part because their curiosity
has been piqued. They join Hammond, along with self-styled
“chaotician” Dr. Ian Malcolm ( Jeff Goldblum) and lawyer Donald
Gennaro (Martin Ferrero), on what turns out to be a rather
gruesome roller-coaster ride of a weekend.
From the get-go, we know that this is not going to end well.
Malcolm, apart from having all the best lines in the movie, is rather
enamored with his theories about chaos. These draw heavily on
ideas that were gaining popularity in the 1980s, when Crichton was
writing the novel the movie’s based on. Malcolm’s big idea—and
the one he was riding the celebrity-scientist fame train on—is that
in highly complex systems, things inevitably go wrong. And just
as predicted, Hammond’s Jurassic Park undergoes a magnificently
catastrophic failure.
Unfortunately, there were a few holes in the genetic sequences that
InGen was able to extract from the preserved blood, so Hammond’s
enterprising scientists filled them with bits and pieces of DNA from
living species. They also engineered their dinosaurs to be all females
to prevent them from breeding. And just to be on the safe side, the
de-extinct dinosaurs were designed to slip into a coma and die if
they weren’t fed a regular supply of the essential amino acid lysine.[^6]
The result is a bunch of enterprising scientists reengineering nature
to create the ultimate theme park and thinking they’ve put all the
safeguards they need in place to prevent something bad happening.
Yet, despite their best efforts, the dinosaurs start breeding and
multiplying, a compromised security system (and security specialist)
allows them to escape, and they start eating the guests.
Even before the team of experts get to Jurassic Park, a disgruntled
employee (Dennis Nedry, played by Wayne Knight) has planned
to steal and sell a number of dinosaur embryos to a competitor.
Nedry is the brains behind the park’s software control systems and
believes he’s owed way more respect and money than he gets. At
an opportune moment, he disrupts the park with what he intends
to be a temporary glitch that will allow him to steal the embryos,
get them off the island, and return to his station before anyone
notices. Unfortunately, an incoming hurricane[^7] interferes with his
plans, resulting in catastrophic failure of the park’s security systems
and a bunch of hungry dinosaurs roaming free. To make things
worse, two of the guests are Hammond’s young nephew and niece,
who find their trip to the theme park transformed into a life-and
The secret behind Hammond’s park is InGen’s technology for
“resurrecting” long-extinct dinosaurs. Using cutting-edge geneediting techniques, his scientists are able to reconstruct dinosaurs
from recovered “dino DNA.” His source for the dino DNA is the
remnants of prehistoric blood that was sucked up by mosquitoes
before they were caught in tree resin and preserved in the resulting
amber as the resin was fossilized.[^5] And his grand plan is to turn the
fictitious island of Isla Nublar into the world’s first living dinosaur
theme park.
death race against a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex and a pack of
vengeful velociraptors.
Fortunately, Sattler and Grant come into their own as
paleontologists-cum-action-heroes. They help save a handful of
remaining survivors, including Hammond, Malcolm, and his nephew
and niece, but not before a number of less fortunate characters have
given their lives in the name of science gone badly wrong. And as
they leave the island, we are left in no doubt that nature, in all its
majesty, has truly trounced the ambitions of Hammond and his team
of genetic engineers.
Jurassic Park is a wonderful Hollywood tale of derring-do. In fact,
it stands the test of time remarkably well as an adventure movie. It
also touches on themes that are, if anything, more important today
than they were back when it was made.
In 1993, when Jurassic Park was released, the idea of bringing
extinct species back from the dead was pure science fiction. Back
then, advances in understanding DNA were fueling the fantasy that,
one day, we might be able to recode genetic sequences to replicate
species that are no longer around, but but, by any stretch of the
imagination, this was beyond the wildest dreams of scientists in
the early 1990s. Yet, since the movie was made, there have been
incredible strides in genetic engineering, so much so that scientists
are now actively working on bringing back extinct species from the
dead. The field even has its own name: de-extinction.
More than the technology, though, Jurassic Park foreshadows
the growing complexities of using powerful new technologies in
an increasingly crowded and demanding world. In 1993, chaos
theory was still an emerging field. Since then, it’s evolved and
expanded to include whole areas of study around complex systems,
especially where mixing people and technology together leads to
unpredictable results.
What really stands out with Jurassic Park, over twenty-five years
later, is how it reveals a very human side of science and technology.
This comes out in questions around when we should tinker with
technology and when we should leave well enough alone. But there
is also a narrative here that appears time and time again with the
movies in this book, and that is how we get our heads around the
These are all issues that are just as relevant now as they were in
1993, and are front and center of ensuring that the technologyenabled future we’re building is one where we want to live, and not
one where we’re constantly fighting for our lives.
In a far corner of Siberia, two Russians—Sergey Zimov and his son
Nikita—are attempting to recreate the Ice Age. More precisely, their
vision is to reconstruct the landscape and ecosystem of northern
Siberia in the Pleistocene, a period in Earth’s history that stretches
from around two and a half million years ago to eleven thousand
years ago. This was a time when the environment was much colder
than now, with huge glaciers and ice sheets flowing over much of
the Earth’s northern hemisphere. It was also a time when humans
coexisted with animals that are long extinct, including saber-tooth
cats, giant ground sloths, and woolly mammoths.
The Zimovs’ ambitions are an extreme example of “Pleistocene
rewilding,” a movement to reintroduce relatively recently extinct
large animals, or their close modern-day equivalents, to regions
where they were once common. In the case of the Zimovs, the
father-and-son team believe that, by reconstructing the Pleistocene
ecosystem in the Siberian steppes and elsewhere, they can slow
down the impacts of climate change on these regions. These areas
are dominated by permafrost, ground that never thaws through
the year. Permafrost ecosystems have developed and survived over
millennia, but a warming global climate (a theme we’ll come back to
in chapter twelve and the movie The Day After Tomorrow) threatens
to catastrophically disrupt them, and as this happens, the impacts
on biodiversity could be devastating. But what gets climate scientists
even more worried is potentially massive releases of trapped
methane as the permafrost disappears.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas—some eighty times more
effective at exacerbating global warming than carbon dioxide—
and large-scale releases from warming permafrost could trigger
catastrophic changes in climate. As a result, finding ways to keep
it in the ground is important. And here the Zimovs came up with
a rather unusual idea: maintaining the stability of the environment
by reintroducing long-extinct species that could help prevent its
sometimes oversized roles mega-entrepreneurs play in dictating how
new tech is used, and possibly abused.
destruction, even in a warmer world. It’s a wild idea, but one that
has some merit.[^8] As a proof of concept, though, the Zimovs needed
somewhere to start. And so they set out to create a park for deextinct Siberian animals: Pleistocene Park.[^9]
Pleistocene Park is by no stretch of the imagination a modern-day
Jurassic Park. The dinosaurs in Hammond’s park date back to the
Mesozoic period, from around 250 million years ago to sixty-five
million years ago. By comparison, the Pleistocene is relatively
modern history, ending a mere eleven and a half thousand years
ago. And the vision behind Pleistocene Park is not thrills, spills, and
profit, but the serious use of science and technology to stabilize an
increasingly unstable environment. Yet there is one thread that ties
them together, and that’s using genetic engineering to reintroduce
extinct species. In this case, the species in question is warm-blooded
and furry: the woolly mammoth.
The idea of de-extinction, or bringing back species from extinction
(it’s even called “resurrection biology” in some circles), has been
around for a while. It’s a controversial idea, and it raises a lot of
tough ethical questions. But proponents of de-extinction argue
that we’re losing species and ecosystems at such a rate that we
can’t afford not to explore technological interventions to help stem
the flow.
Early approaches to bringing species back from the dead have
involved selective breeding. The idea was simple—if you have
modern ancestors of a recently extinct species, selectively breeding
specimens that have a higher genetic similarity to their forebears
can potentially help reconstruct their genome in living animals.
This approach is being used in attempts to bring back the aurochs,
an ancestor of modern cattle.[^10] But it’s slow, and it depends on
the fragmented genome of the extinct species still surviving in its
modern-day equivalents.
An alternative to selective breeding is cloning. This involves finding
a viable cell, or cell nucleus, in an extinct but well-preserved animal
and growing a new living clone from it. It’s definitely a more
appealing route for impatient resurrection biologists, but it does
Which is where advances in genetic engineering come in.
The technological premise of Jurassic Park is that scientists can
reconstruct the genome of long-dead animals from preserved
DNA fragments. It’s a compelling idea, if you think of DNA as a
massively long and complex instruction set that tells a group of
biological molecules how to build an animal. In principle, if we
could reconstruct the genome of an extinct species, we would have
the basic instruction set—the biological software—to reconstruct
individual members of it.
The bad news is that DNA-reconstruction-based de-extinction is far
more complex than this. First you need intact fragments of DNA,
which is not easy, as DNA degrades easily (and is pretty much
impossible to obtain, as far as we know, for dinosaurs). Then you
need to be able to stitch all of your fragments together, which is
akin to completing a billion-piece jigsaw puzzle without knowing
what the final picture looks like. This is a Herculean task, although
with breakthroughs in data manipulation and machine learning,
scientists are getting better at it. But even when you have your
reconstructed genome, you need the biological “wetware”—all the
stuff that’s needed to create, incubate, and nurture a new living
thing, like eggs, nutrients, a safe space to grow and mature, and so
on. Within all this complexity, it turns out that getting your DNA
sequence right is just the beginning of translating that genetic
code into a living, breathing entity. But in some cases, it might
be possible.
In 2013, Sergey Zimov was introduced to the geneticist George
Church at a conference on de-extinction. Church is an accomplished
scientist in the field of DNA analysis and reconstruction, and a
thought leader in the field of synthetic biology (which we’ll come
back to in chapter nine). It was a match made in resurrection
biology heaven. Zimov wanted to populate his Pleistocene Park
with mammoths, and Church thought he could see a way of
achieving this.
mean getting your hands on intact cells from long-dead animals and
devising ways to “resurrect” these, which is no mean feat. Cloning
has potential when it comes to recently extinct species whose
cells have been well preserved—for instance, where the whole
animal has become frozen in ice. But it’s still a slow and extremely
limited option.
What resulted was an ambitious project to de-extinct the woolly
mammoth. Church and others who are working on this have faced
plenty of hurdles. But the technology has been advancing so fast
that, as of 2017, scientists were predicting they would be able to
reproduce the woolly mammoth within the next two years.
One of those hurdles was the lack of solid DNA sequences to work
from. Frustratingly, although there are many instances of wellpreserved woolly mammoths, their DNA rarely survives being frozen
for tens of thousands of years. To overcome this, Church and others
have taken a different tack: Take a modern, living relative of the
mammoth, and engineer into it traits that would allow it to live on
the Siberian tundra, just like its woolly ancestors.
Church’s team’s starting point has been the Asian elephant. This is
their source of base DNA for their “woolly mammoth 2.0”—their
starting source code, if you like. So far, they’ve identified fiftyplus gene sequences they think they can play with to give their
modern-day woolly mammoth the traits it would need to thrive
in Pleistocene Park, including a coat of hair, smaller ears, and a
constitution adapted to cold.
The next hurdle they face is how to translate the code embedded in
their new woolly mammoth genome into a living, breathing animal.
The most obvious route would be to impregnate a female Asian
elephant with a fertilized egg containing the new code. But Asian
elephants are endangered, and no one’s likely to allow such cuttingedge experimentation on the precious few that are still around, so
scientists are working on an artificial womb for their reinvented
woolly mammoth. They’re making progress with mice and hope to
crack the motherless mammoth challenge relatively soon.
It’s perhaps a stretch to call this creative approach to recreating
a species (or “reanimation” as Church refers to it) “de-extinction,”
as what is being formed is a new species. Just as the dinosaurs in
Jurassic Park weren’t quite the same as their ancestors, Church’s
woolly mammoths wouldn’t be the same as their forebears. But they
would be designed to function within a specific ecological niche,
albeit one that’s the result of human-influenced climate change.
And this raises an interesting question around de-extinction: If the
genetic tools we are now developing give us the ability to improve
on nature, why recreate the past, when we could reimagine the
future? Why stick to the DNA code that led to animals being weeded
out because they couldn’t survive in a changing environment, when
This idea doesn’t sit so well with some people, who argue that we
should be dialing down human interference in the environment
and turning the clock back on human destruction. And they have
a point, especially when we consider the genetic diversity we are
hemorrhaging away with the current rate of biodiversity loss. Yet
we cannot ignore the possibilities that modern genetic engineering
is opening up. These include the ability to rapidly and cheaply read
genetic sequences and translate them to digital code, to virtually
manipulate them and recode them, and then to download them
back into the real world. These are heady capabilities, and for some
there is an almost irresistible pull toward using them, so much so
that some would argue that not to use them would be verging on
the irresponsible.
These tools take us far beyond de-extinction. The reimagining of
species like the woolly mammoth is just the tip of the iceberg when
it comes to genetic design and engineering. Why stop at recreating
old species when you could redesign current ones? Why just
redesign existing species when you could create brand-new ones?
And why stick to the genetic language of all earth-bound living
creatures, when you could invent a new language—a new DNA? In
fact, why not go all the way, and create alien life here on earth?
These are all conversations that scientists are having now, spurred
on by breakthroughs in DNA sequencing, analysis, and synthesis.
Scientists are already developing artificial forms of DNA that contain
more than the four DNA building blocks found in nature.[^11] And
some are working on creating completely novel artificial cells that
not only are constructed from off-the-shelf chemicals, but also
have a genetic heritage that traces back to computer programs, not
evolutionary life. In 2016, for instance, scientist and entrepreneur
Craig Venter announced that his team had produced a completely
artificial living cell.[^12] Venter’s cell—tagged “JCVI-syn3.0”—is paving
the way for designing and creating completely artificial life forms,
we could make them better, stronger, and more likely to survive and
thrive in the modern world?
and the work being done here by many different groups is signaling
a possible transition from biological evolution to biology by design.
One of the interesting twists to come out of this research is that
scientists are developing the ability to “watermark” their creations
by embedding genetic identity codes. As research here progresses,
future generations may be able to pinpoint precisely who designed
the plants and animals around them, and even parts of their own
bodies, including when and where they were designed. This
does, of course, raise some rather knotty ethical questions around
ownership. If you one day have a JCVI-tagged dog, or a JCVIwatermarked replacement kidney, for instance, who owns them?
This research is pushing us into ethical questions that we’ve never
had to face before. But it’s being justified by the tremendous
benefits it could bring for current and future generations. These
touch on everything from bio-based chemicals production to new
medical treatments and ways to stay healthier longer, and even
designer organs and body-part replacements at some point. It’s also
being driven by our near-insatiable curiosity and our drive to better
understand the world we live in and gain mastery over it. And here,
just like the scientists in Jurassic Park, we’re deeply caught up in
what we can do as we learn to code and recode life.
But, just because we can now resurrect and redesign species, should
we?
Perhaps one of the most famous lines from Jurassic Park—at
least for people obsessed with the dark side of science—is when
Ian Malcolm berates Hammond, saying, “Your scientists were so
preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if
they should.”
Ethics and responsibility in science are complicated. I’ve met
remarkably few scientists and engineers who would consider
themselves to be unethical or irresponsible. That said, I know plenty
of scientists who are so engaged with their work and the amazing
things they believe it’ll lead to that they sometimes struggle to
appreciate the broader context within which they operate.
The challenges surrounding ethical and responsible research are
deeply pertinent to de-extinction. A couple of decades ago, they
were largely academic. The imaginations of scientists, back when
Of course, this is not a new question. The tensions between
technological advances and social impacts were glaringly apparent
through the Industrial Revolution, as mechanization led to job
losses and hardship for some. And the invention of the atomic
bomb, followed by its use on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the second
World War, took us into deeply uncharted territory when it came to
balancing what we can and should do with powerful technologies.
Yet, in some ways, the challenges we’ve faced in the past over the
responsible development and use of science and technology were
just a rehearsal for what’s coming down the pike, as we enter a new
age of technological innovation.
For all its scientific inaccuracies and fantastical scenarios, Jurassic
Park does a good job of illuminating the challenges of unintended
consequences arising from somewhat naïve and myopic science.
Take InGen’s scientists, for instance. They’re portrayed as being so
enamored with what they’ve achieved that they lack the ability to
see beyond their own brilliance to what they might have missed.[^13]
Of course, they’re not fools. They know that they’re breaking new
ground by bringing dinosaurs back to life, and that there are going
to be risks. It would be problematic, for instance, if any of the
dinosaurs escaped the island and survived, and they recognize this.
So the scientists design them to be dependent on a substance it was
thought they couldn’t get enough of naturally, the essential amino
acid lysine. This was the so-called “lysine contingency,” and, as it
turns out, it isn’t too dissimilar from techniques real-world genetic
engineers use to control their progeny.
Jurassic Park hit the screen, far outstripped the techniques they
had access to at the time. Things are very different now, though, as
research on woolly mammoths and other extinct species is showing.
In a very real way, we’re entering a world that very much echoes
the “can-do” culture of Hammond’s Jurassic Park, where scientists
are increasingly able to do what was once unimaginable. In such
a world, where do the lines between “could” and “should” lie, and
how do scientists, engineers, and others develop the understanding
and ability to do what is socially responsible, while avoiding what
is not?
Even though it’s essential to life, lysine isn’t synthesized naturally by
animals. As a result, it has to be ingested, either in its raw form or
by eating foods that contain it, including plants or bacteria (and their
products) that produce it naturally, for instance, or other animals.
In their wisdom, InGen’s scientists assume that they can engineer
lysine dependency into their dinosaurs, then keep them alive with a
diet rich in the substance, thinking that they wouldn’t be able to get
enough lysine if they escaped. The trouble is, this contingency turns
out to be about as useful as trying to starve someone by locking
them in a grocery store.
There’s a pretty high chance that the movie’s scriptwriters didn’t
know that this safety feature wouldn’t work, or that they didn’t
care. Either way, it’s a salutary tale of scientists who are trying to be
responsible—at least their version of “responsible”—but are tripped
up by what they don’t know, and what they don’t care to find out.
In the movie, not much is made of the lysine contingency, unlike in
Michael Crichton’s book that the movie’s based on, where this basic
oversight leads to the eventual escape of the dinosaurs from the
island and onto the mainland. There is another oversight, though,
that features strongly in the movie, and is a second strike against the
short-sightedness of the scientists involved. This is the assumption
that InGen’s dinosaurs couldn’t breed.
This is another part of the storyline where scientific plausibility isn’t
allowed to stand in the way of a good story. But, as with the lysine,
it flags the dangers of thinking you’re smart enough to have every
eventuality covered. In the movie, InGen’s scientists design all of
their dinosaurs to be females. Their thinking: no males, no breeding,
no babies, no problem. Apart from one small issue: When stitching
together their fragments of dinosaur DNA with that of living species,
they filled some of the holes with frog DNA.
This is where we need to suspend scientific skepticism somewhat,
as designing a functional genome isn’t as straightforward as cutting
and pasting from one animal to another. In fact, this is so far from
how things work that it would be like an architect, on losing a few
pages from the plans of a multi-million dollar skyscraper, slipping in
a few random pages from a cookie-cutter duplex and hoping for the
best. The result would be a disaster. But stick with the story for the
moment, because in the world of Jurassic Park, this naïve mistake
led to a tipping point that the scientists didn’t anticipate. Just as
some species of frog can switch from female to male with the right
Some of this comes down to what responsible science means, which,
as we’ll discover in later chapters, is about more than just having
good intentions. It also means having the humility to recognize your
limitations, and the willingness to listen to and work with others
who bring different types of expertise and knowledge to the table.
This possibility of unanticipated outcomes shines a bright spotlight
on the question of whether some lines of research or technological
development should be pursued, even if they could. Jurassic Park
explores this through genetic engineering and de-extinction, but
the same questions apply to many other areas of technological
advancement, where new knowledge has the potential to have a
substantial impact on society. And the more complex the science
and technology we begin to play with is, the more pressing this
distinction between “could” and “should” becomes.
Unfortunately, there are no easy guidelines or rules of thumb
that help decide what is probably okay and what is probably not,
although much of this book is devoted to ways of thinking that
reduce the chances of making a mess of things. Even when we do
have a sense of how to decide between great ideas and really bad
ones, though, there’s one aspect of reality we can’t escape from:
Complex systems behave in unpredictable ways.
Michael Crichton started playing with the ideas behind Jurassic
Park in the 1980s, when “chaos” was becoming trendy. I was an
undergraduate at the time, studying physics, and it was nearly
impossible to avoid the world of “strange attractors” and “fractals.”
These were the years of the “Mandelbrot Set” and computers that
were powerful enough to calculate the numbers it contained and
display them as stunningly psychedelic images. The recursive
complexity in the resulting fractals became the poster child for a
growing field of mathematics that grappled with systems where,
beyond certain limits, their behavior was impossible to predict. The
field came to be known informally as chaos theory.
environmental stimuli, the DNA borrowed from frogs inadvertently
gave the dinosaurs the same ability. And this brings us back to
the real world, or at least the near-real world, of de-extinction. As
scientists and others begin to recreate extinct species, or redesign
animals based on long-gone relatives, how do we ensure that, in
their cleverness, they’re not missing something important?
Chaos theory grew out of the work of the American meteorologist
Edward Lorenz. When he started his career, it was assumed that
the solution to more accurate weather prediction was better data
and better models. But in the 1950s, Lorenz began to challenge
this idea. What he found was that, in some cases, minute changes
in atmospheric conditions could lead to dramatically different
outcomes down the line, so much so that, in sufficiently complex
systems, it was impossible to predict the results of seemingly
insignificant changes.
In 1963, when he published the paper that established chaos
theory,[^14] it was a revolutionary idea—at least to scientists who still
hung onto the assumption that we live in a predictable world. Much
as quantum physics challenged scientists’ ideas of how predictable
physical processes are in the invisible world of atoms and subatomic
particles, chaos theory challenged their belief that, if we have
enough information, we can predict the outcomes of our actions in
our everyday lives.
At the core of Lorenz’s ideas was the observation that, in a
sufficiently complex system, the smallest variation could lead to
profound differences in outcomes. In 1969, he coined the term “the
Butterfly Effect,” suggesting that the world’s weather systems are so
complex and interconnected that a butterfly flapping its wings on
one side of the world could initiate a chain of events that ultimately
led to a tornado on the other.
Lorenz wasn’t the first to suggest that small changes in complex
systems can have large and unpredictable effects. But he was
perhaps the first to pull the idea into mainstream science. And this is
where chaos theory might have stayed, were it not for the discovery
of the “Mandelbrot Set” by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.
In 1979, Mandelbrot demonstrated how a seemingly simple equation
could lead to images of infinite complexity. The more you zoomed
in to the images his equation produced, the more detail became
visible. As with Lorentz’s work, Mandelbrot’s research showed
that very simple beginnings could lead to complex, unpredictable,
and chaotic outcomes. But Lorentz, Mandelbrot, and others also
revealed another intriguing aspect of chaos theory, and this was
that complex systems can lead to predictable chaos. This may seem
counterintuitive, but what their work showed was that, even where
Mandelbrot fractals became all the rage in the 1980s. As a new
generation of computer geeks got their hands on the latest personal
computers, kids began to replicate the Mandelbrot fractal and revel
in its complexity. Reproducing it became a test of one’s coding
expertise and the power of one’s hardware. In one memorable
guest lecture on parallel processing I attended, the lecturer even
demonstrated the power of a new chip by showing how fast it could
produce Mandelbrot fractals.
This growing excitement around chaos theory and the idea that the
world is ultimately unpredictable was admirably captured in James
Gleick’s 1987 book Chaos: Making a New Science.[^15] Gleick pulled
chaos theory out of the realm of scientists and computer geeks and
placed it firmly in the public domain, and also into the hands of
novelists and moviemakers. In Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm captures
the essence of the chaos zeitgeist, and uses this to drive along a
narrative of naïve human arrogance versus the triumphal dominance
of chaotic, unpredictable nature. Naturally, there’s a lot of hokum
here, including the rather silly idea that chaos theory means being
able to predict when chaos will occur (it doesn’t). But the concept
that we cannot wield perfect control over complex technologies
within a complex world is nevertheless an important one.
Chaos theory suggests that, in a complex system, immeasurably
small actions or events can profoundly affect what happens over
the course of time, making accurate predictions of the future
well-nigh impossible. This is important as we develop and deploy
highly complex technologies. However, it also suggests that there
are boundaries to what might happen and what will not as we do
this. And these boundaries become highly relevant in separating out
plausible futures from sheer fantasy.
Chaos theory also indicates that, within complex systems, there are
points of stability. In the context of technological innovation, this
suggests that there are some futures that are more likely to occur if
we take the appropriate courses of action. But these are also futures
that can be squandered if we don’t think ahead about our actions
and their consequences.
Jurassic Park focuses on the latter of these possibilities, and it
does so to great effect. What we see unfolding is a catastrophic
chaotic unpredictability reigns, there are always limits to what the
outcomes might be.
confluence of poorly understood technology, the ability of natural
systems to adapt and evolve, unpredictable weather, and human
foibles. The result is a park in chaos and dinosaurs dining on
people. This is a godsend for a blockbuster movie designed to scare
and thrill its audiences. But how realistic is this chaotic confluence
of unpredictability?
As it turns out, it’s pretty realistic—up to a point. Chaos theory
isn’t as trendy today as it was back when Jurassic Park was made.
But the realization that complex systems are vulnerable to big
(and sometimes catastrophic) shifts in behavior stemming from
small changes is a critical area of research. And we know that
technological innovation has the capacity to trigger events and
outcomes within the complex social and environmental systems we
live in that are hard to predict and manage.
As if to press the point home here, as I’m writing this, Hurricane
Harvey has just swept through Houston, causing unprecedented
devastation. The broad strokes of what occurred were predictable
to an extent—the massive flooding exacerbated by poor urban
planning, the likelihood of people and animals being stranded and
killed, even the political rhetoric around who was responsible and
what could have been done better. In the midst of all of this, though,
a chemical plant owned by the French company Arkema underwent
an unprecedented catastrophic failure.
The plant produced organic peroxides. These are unstable, volatile
chemicals that need to be kept cool to keep them safe, but they
are also important in the production of many products we use on
a daily basis. As Harvey led to widespread flooding, the plant’s
electric power supplies that powered the cooling systems failed one
by one—first the main supply, then the backups. In the end, all the
company could do was to remove the chemicals to remote parts of
the plant, and wait for them to vent, ignite, and explode.
On its own, this would seem like an unfortunate but predictable
outcome. But there’s evidence of a cascade of events that
exacerbated the failure, many of them seemingly insignificant, but all
part of a web of interactions that resulted in the unintended ignition
of stored chemicals and the release of toxic materials into the
environment. The news and commentary site Buzzfeed obtained a
logbook from the plant that paints a picture of cascading incidents,
including “overflowing wastewater tanks, failing power systems,
toilets that stopped working, and even a snake, washed in by rising
Contingencies were no doubt in place for flooding and power
failures. Overflowing toilets and snakes? Probably not. Yet so
often it’s these seemingly small events that help trigger larger and
seemingly chaotic ones in complex systems.
Such cascades of events leading to unexpected outcomes are more
common than we sometimes realize. For instance, few people expect
industrial accidents to occur, but they nevertheless do. In fact,
they happen so regularly that the academic Charles Perrow coined
the term “normal accidents,” together with the theory that, in any
sufficiently complex technological system, unanticipated events are
inevitable.[^17]
Of course, if Hammond had read his Perrow, he might have had
a better understanding of just how precarious his new Jurassic
Park was. Sadly, he didn’t. But even if Hammond and his team
had been aware of the challenges of managing complex systems,
there’s another factor that led to the chaos in the movie that reflects
real life, and that’s the way that power plays an oversized role in
determining the trajectory of a new technology, along with any
fallout that accompanies it.
Beyond the genetic engineering, the de-extinction, and the homage
to chaos theory, Jurassic Park is a movie about power: not only the
power to create and destroy life, but the power to control others, to
dominate them, and to win.
Power, and the advantages and rewards it brings, is deeply rooted in
human nature, together with the systems we build that reflect and
amplify this nature. But this nature in turn reflects the evolutionary
processes that we are a product of. Jurassic Park cleverly taps into
this with the dinosaur-power theme. And in fact, one of the movie’s
more compelling narrative threads is the power and dominance
of the dinosaurs and the natural world over their human creators,
who merely have delusions of power. Yet this is also a movie about
waters. Then finally: ‘extraction’ of the crew by boat. And days later,
blasts and foul, frightening smoke.”[^16]
human power dynamics, and how these influence the development,
use, and ultimately in this case the abuse, of new technologies.
There are some interesting side stories about power here, for
instance, the power Ian Malcolm draws from his “excess of
personality.” But it’s the power dynamic between Hammond, the
lawyer Donald Gennaro, and InGen’s investors that particularly
intrigues me. Here, we get a glimpse of the ability of visions of
power to deeply influence actions.
At a very simple level, Jurassic Park is a movie about corporate
greed. Hammond’s investors want a return on their investment, and
they are threatening to exert their considerable power to get it.
Gennaro is their proxy, but this in turn places him in a position of
power. He’s the linchpin who can make or break the park, and he
knows it.
Then there’s Hammond himself, who revels in his power over
people as an entertainer, charmer, and entrepreneur.
These competing visions of power create a dynamic tension that
ultimately leads to disaster, as the pursuit of personal and corporate
gain leads to sacrificed lives and morals. In this sense, Jurassic
Park is something of a morality tale, a cautionary warning against
placing power and profit over what is right and good. Yet this is
too simplistic a takeaway from the perspective of developing new
technologies responsibly.
In reality, there will always be power differentials and power
struggles. Not only will many of these be legitimate—including the
fiduciary responsibility of innovators to investors—but they are also
an essential driving force that prevents society from stagnating. The
challenge we face is not to abdicate power, but to develop ways of
understanding and using it in ways that are socially responsible.
This does not happen in Jurassic Park, clearly. But that doesn’t
mean that we cannot have responsible innovation, or corporate
social responsibility, that works, or even ethical entrepreneurs. It’s
easy to see the downsides of powerful organizations and individuals
pushing through technological innovation at the expense of others.
And there are many downsides; you just need to look at the past
two hundred years of environmental harm and human disease tied
to technological innovation to appreciate this. Yet innovation that
has been driven by profit and the desire to amass and wield power
has also created a lot of good. The challenge we face is how we
In large part, this is about learning how we develop and wield
power appropriately—not eschewing it, but understanding and
accepting the sometimes-complex responsibilities that come with it.
And this isn’t limited to commercial or fiscal power. Scientists wield
power with the knowledge they generate. Activists wield power
in the methods they use and the rhetoric they employ. Legislators
have the power to establish law. And citizens collectively have
considerable power over who does what and how. Understanding
these different facets of power and its responsible use is critical to
the safe and beneficial development and use of new technologies—
not just genetic engineering, but every other technology that touches
our lives as well, including the technology that’s at the center of our
next movie: Never Let Me Go.
harness the realities of who we are and the world we live in to build
a better future for as many people as we can, without sacrificing the
health and well-being of communities and individuals along the way.
[^5]: A 2013 study tried to extract DNA from copal, an ancient form of resin that precedes full fossilization into amber. The scientists failed, and as a result claimed that it’s exceedingly unlikely that DNA could be extracted from amber, which is millions of years older than copal. Jurassic Park has a great scientific premise. Sadly, it’s not a realistic one. Penney D, et al. (2013). “Absence of Ancient DNA in Sub-Fossil Insect Inclusions Preserved in ‘Anthropocene’ Colombian Copal.” PLoS One 8(9). http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073150
[^6]: There is just a passing mention of the Jurassic Park dinosaurs’ dependence on lysine in the movie. In the original book, though, lysine dependence plays a substantial role in the ensuing story.
[^7]: During filming, there was an actual hurricane that hit the site. Some of the storm footage is real.
[^8]: You can read more about the quest to increase environmental resilience by resurrecting the woolly mammoth in Ben Mezrich’s book “Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History’s Most Iconic Extinct Creature” (2017, Atira Books).
[^9]: This is a real project, with a real website. You can discover more at http://www.pleistocenepark.ru/en/
[^10]: The Tauros Program is a Dutch initiative to create what they call a “true replacement” for the currently-extinct aurochs. You can find out more at https://rewildingeurope.com/rewilding-in-action/wildlife-comeback/tauros/
[^11]: In 2009, a team of scientists synthesized an artificial form of DNA with six nucleotide building blocks, rather than the four found in naturally-occurring DNA (Georgiadis, M. M., et al. (2015). “Structural Basis for a Six-Nucleotide Genetic Alphabet.” Journal of the American Chemical Society 137(21): 6947-6955. http://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5b03482). More recently, scientists reported in the journal Nature that they had created a semi-synthetic organism that used artificial six-letter DNA to store and retrieve information (Zhang, Y., et al. (2017). “A semi-synthetic organism that stores and retrieves increased genetic information.” Nature 551: 644. http://doi.org/10.1038/nature24659).
[^12]: Venter’s team’s work is described in the journal Nature in 2016. Callaway, E. (2016). “‘Minimal’ cell raises stakes in race to harness synthetic life.” Nature 531: 557–558. http://doi.org/10.1038/531557a
[^13]: Despite my portrayal of InGen’s scientists as enthusiastically short-sighted, the company’s Chief Scientist, Henry Wu (played by BD Wong), is increasingly revealed to have serious evil-scientist tendencies in subsequent movies in the series.
[^14]: The paper was titled “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow” and was published in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. Edward N. Lorenz (1963). ”Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow”. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. 20 (2): 130–141. http://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1963)020<0130:DNF>2.0.CO;2
[^15]: James Gleick (1987) “Chaos: Making a New Science.” Viking, New York.
[^16]: Nidhi Subbaraman and Jessica Garrison (2017) “Here’s What Happened In The Hours After Hurricane Harvey Hit A Chemical Plant, According To A Staff Log” Buzzfeed, November 16, 2017. https://www.buzzfeed.com/nidhisubbaraman/arkema-chemical-plant-houston-timeline
[^17]: Charles Perrow developed his ideas in his 1984 book “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies,” published by Princeton University Press.