Jurassic World: Frankenstein for the 21st Century?

Jack Stilgoe: I was speaking yesterday at the Circling the Square conference in Nottingham and asked to say something about responsible innovation. Here's the gist of what I said. I've been told to issue a SPOILER ALERT!, although I don't think I'm giving away much of Jurassic World in harvesting its narrative.

Frankenstein is almost 200 years old. It remains the default parable of irresponsible innovation even though it was written in the 1810s, when experiments with electricity and surgery were capturing the imaginations of Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and co. In the early 21^st century, hopes and fears swirl around synthetic biology, geoengineering and de-extinction. While scientists stake their claims on various imagined futures, we watch Jurassic World.

In 2012, the philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour, writing for the Breakthrough Institute, explored the Frankenstein story. Why, he wondered, do we persist in confusing the monster with its creator? Langdon Winner had argued in 1978 that the problem was Hollywood. The many films of Frankenstein switched the villain from the scientist to the monster, stripping the human protagonists of their agency and reinforcing the message that monsters are bad and red lines must not be crossed. Latour argues that monsters are normal (in any case, as the scientist Henry Wu says in Jurassic World, 'monster is a relative term'). The challenge is to find ways to love our monsters. Responsible innovation is about taking care of science and technology, not cordoning it off from society.