Jurassic Park focuses on the latter of these possibilities, and it does so to great effect. What we see unfolding is a catastrophic 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 waters. Then finally: ‘extraction’ of the crew by boat. And days later, blasts and foul, frightening smoke.”16
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.
Visions of Power
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 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 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.
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.
Never Let Me Go: A Cautionary Tale of Human Cloning
“Who’d make up stories as horrible as that?”
—Ruth
Sins of Futures Past
In 2002, the birth