## Could We? Should We?

If there is a single question that anchors *Films from the Future*, it is this: just because we can develop a technology, does that mean we should? It surfaces in nearly every chapter, taking different forms with each film, but always circling back to the gap between capability and wisdom.

The question is deceptively simple. In practice, it opens onto a landscape of competing values, uncertain consequences, and uncomfortable tradeoffs. And it is a question that becomes more urgent as our technological capabilities accelerate beyond our collective ability to anticipate where they will lead.

### The Folly of Entrepreneurial Arrogance

Jurassic Park provides the book's most vivid illustration of this tension. John Hammond's dream of resurrecting dinosaurs through genetic engineering is driven by ambition and showmanship. He assembles brilliant scientists, builds elaborate safety systems, and convinces himself that he has everything under control. Ian Malcolm's objections, rooted in chaos theory, are brushed aside as academic hand-wringing.

What makes Jurassic Park such a powerful starting point is not just that things go spectacularly wrong, but *why* they go wrong. Hammond's failure is not primarily technical. It is a failure of imagination and humility. He never seriously entertains the possibility that his safeguards might not be enough, that the systems he has created might behave in ways he cannot predict. The book uses this as a launching pad for exploring how real-world de-extinction science raises the same fundamental questions about the limits of human foresight.

### The Quiet Horror of Acceptance

Never Let Me Go approaches the question from the opposite direction. Where Jurassic Park dramatizes the moment of reckless creation, Never Let Me Go shows what happens long after a morally questionable technology has been accepted. In the film's alternate England, human cloning for organ harvesting has become normalized. Society has answered the "should we?" question with a collective shrug, and the consequences are devastating.

The film's power lies in how ordinary everything feels. The clones attend school, form friendships, fall in love. The technology that will kill them operates not through dramatic catastrophe but through quiet, bureaucratic inevitability. The book draws on this to explore how easily societies accommodate technologies that serve the majority at terrible cost to a few, as long as the cost is borne by people who can be defined as somehow less than fully human.

### The Seduction of Enhancement

Limitless adds another dimension to the question. The film's protagonist discovers a drug that unlocks the full potential of his brain, and the results are intoxicating. Unlike the clearly dangerous technologies in other films, NZT-48 appears, at least initially, to be genuinely beneficial. The question is not whether the technology works, but what it means to use it.

The book uses Limitless to explore the growing real-world market for cognitive enhancers and the assumptions embedded in our culture about intelligence and success. If a pill can make you smarter, faster, more capable, why would you refuse it? And if you do refuse, what happens when everyone around you does not? The "should we?" question here is not about preventing catastrophe but about navigating a world where the pressure to enhance is relentless and the line between choice and coercion blurs.

### When the Ends Seem to Justify the Means

Inferno pushes the question to its most extreme. Bertrand Zobrist, the film's antagonist, is convinced that overpopulation will destroy humanity. His solution is a genetically engineered virus designed to sterilize a significant portion of the global population. In his mind, the math is clear: short-term suffering prevents long-term extinction.

The book takes Zobrist's logic seriously, not because it endorses it, but because it illustrates the danger of certainty combined with capability. Zobrist has both the conviction that he is right and the resources to act on that conviction. The gap between "could" and "should" collapses entirely when a single individual decides that their moral calculus overrides everyone else's right to choose.

### Questions Worth Sitting With

Across these four films, the book reveals that "could we? should we?" is never a single question. It fractures into many:

- Who gets to decide what technologies are developed, and on what basis?
- What happens when our capability to create outpaces our wisdom to govern?
- How do we distinguish genuine benefit from technological vanity or hubris?
- When a technology offers clear advantages to some at the expense of others, how do we weigh those competing interests?
- Is there a meaningful difference between choosing not to develop a technology and choosing to accept the status quo?

These are not questions with clean answers. But the book argues persuasively that failing to ask them, or leaving them to be answered only by those with the power and resources to build, is itself a choice with consequences.

For the specific technologies that raise these questions, see [De-Extinction](https://spoileralert.wtf/md-files/est_de_extinction.md), [Cloning](https://spoileralert.wtf/md-files/est_cloning.md), [Smart Drugs and Cognitive Enhancement](https://spoileralert.wtf/md-files/est_smart_drugs.md), and [Gain-of-Function Research](https://spoileralert.wtf/md-files/est_gain_of_function.md). For how this tension connects to who bears the consequences, see [Power, Privilege, and Access](https://spoileralert.wtf/md-files/rei_power_privilege_access.md) and [Intergenerational Responsibility](https://spoileralert.wtf/md-files/rei_intergenerational_responsibility.md).

## Further Reading

- [Designing the Technological Futures We Aspire To — Andrew Maynard (Future of Being Human, 2025)](https://www.futureofbeinghuman.com/p/designing-responsible-technological-futures) — Maynard argues that transformative technologies are advancing far faster than our collective ability to ask where they are taking us, making the case for frameworks that help people grapple with the essential questions — what technologies do we want, where do we want them to take us, and how do we spot the dangers before it is too late — across AI, gene editing, brain-computer interfaces, and beyond.
- [Innovating responsibly in a culture of entrepreneurship](https://www.futureofbeinghuman.com/p/responsible-innovation) — Maynard examines how the drive to innovate can outpace our ability to foresee consequences, particularly in entrepreneurial cultures that reward speed over caution, and explores what it means to embed responsibility into the innovation process itself.
- [The Precautionary Principle — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/precautionary-principle/) — A thorough philosophical treatment of when and how we should exercise caution in the face of uncertain but potentially serious technological risks, examining competing formulations of the principle and their implications for science policy and innovation governance.
- [Responsible Innovation: Managing the Responsible Emergence of Science and Innovation in Society](https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118551424) — Richard Owen, John Bessant, and Maggy Heintz's edited volume provides foundational frameworks for responsible innovation, addressing how societies can govern emerging technologies while balancing the imperative to innovate with the obligation to anticipate harm.
- [What Is the Collingridge Dilemma and Why Is It Important for Tech Policy? — Demos Helsinki (2022, updated 2024)](https://demoshelsinki.fi/what-is-the-collingridge-dilemma-tech-policy/) — A clear explanation of David Collingridge's foundational insight that technology is easiest to control when we understand it least, and hardest to redirect once its consequences become clear. The piece proposes experimental governance as a practical way through this paradox — directly relevant to the "could we, should we" question at every stage of innovation.
- [Science and Technology Ethics — The Hastings Center](https://www.thehastingscenter.org/science-and-technology-ethics/) — The Hastings Center, the nation's oldest independent bioethics research institute, examines the ethical dimensions of emerging technologies from AI to genetic engineering, providing frameworks for asking "should we?" questions about innovations whose capabilities increasingly outpace our ability to govern them responsibly.
- [Anticipatory Governance of Emerging Technologies — OECD (2025)](https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/emerging-technologies/anticipatory-governance-of-emerging-technologies.html) — The OECD's policy framework advocates for embedding ethical considerations into the design phase of emerging technologies rather than regulating after harm occurs, offering a practical institutional counterpart to the book's philosophical arguments about closing the gap between innovation speed and societal readiness.
- [Global Risks Report 2025 — World Economic Forum](https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2025/) — The WEF's annual assessment of the most pressing global risks, including those driven by emerging technologies, provides empirical grounding for the urgency of the "could we, should we" question and the consequences of failing to ask it in time.