Research Summary
Artificial Sun
Cixin Liu had generated such a great impact in the field science fiction novels after publishing his work The Wondering Earth. The novel had also been adapted to a movie, which also received great success in China as well as other countries. The charming story in the novel attracts not only Chinese readers but also readers who are reading translated editions. Although the sun is not going to die, the ignorance still exists in humanity. In history, many tragedies have happened because of the ignorance of the leaders or local people. Countless mistakes happened because of ignorance in humanity. For example, the German people blindly chose Adolf Hitler as their choice without knowing enough about his personality, Adolf Hitler confidentially attacked the Soviet Union, Nuclear Bomb was dropped to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Artificial intelligence replaced millions of jobs. Since not much information exists on the internet about the source I chose, my research will focus on the mistakes caused by ignorance of human. The results of this research will lead to my adaptation of the novel – the creation of an artificial sun and how a person turn the sun into the first interstellar spaceship of human race, overturn the current worldview of economic advantage is the first priority, and reignite the hope of human race to discover unfounded places in the universe.
Annotated Bibliography
“Preventing the misuse of gene synthesis: fostering industry self-regulation, backed up with targeted government policies, is the best way to capture the benefits and reduce the risks of synthetic genomics (Double-Edged DNA)” *
This article by Tucker, Jonathan B. deeply talked about how a beneficial science breakthrough now is causing bad results in human because of the ignorance of people. The users was not paying enough attention to what the breakthrough can do and what may it cause in the future. The article shows that as human are able to do more things to help people using science, people are more capable to harm people if we are not careful about using new powers. As scientists accomplished “the feat … to synthesize long strands of DNA and stitch them together into a genome… for poliovirus in 2002, the Spanish influenza virus in 2005, and the SARS virus in 2008” (1) to help people, many scientists worry that “it will soon become technically feasible to synthesize the smallpox virus, a deadly scourge that was eradicated from nature in the late 1970s and currently exists only in a few highly secure repositories.” (1) This piece will help my story by showing how the misusage of a beneficial thing can cause bad results.
“History of Science: When eugenics became Law” *
This article focusses on the devastating consequences of eugenics (later considered as pseudoscience) by examining “the 1927 US Supreme Court case known as Buck v. Bell” (1). During the introduction of the case, the author Victoria Nourse states that,
Eugenics is a well-known low point in the modern history of science. In the United States, from the late nineteenth century to the 1940s, credence was given to this pseudoscience focused on the notional 'improvement' of human populations by halting the reproduction of supposedly lesser genes. Less well known is the story of how US law rendered eugenics intellectually respectable across the world, supporting programmes from Canada to Sweden. Ultimately, this egregious failing led to the enforced sterilization of at least 60,000 US citizens, and was used by the Nazi regime to justify its own programme of sterilization and, later, extermination. (1)
Nourse’s explanation about eugenics is just an example of the ignorance in the leaders can cause damage on their civilians, this shows how leaders’ misunderstandings about new science ideologies or technology breakthroughs can cause huge impact to the whole society. In my adaptation, I will continue this connection between leaders’ decisions about where to apply beneficial things and their social impacts.
“Chinese Scientist Faces Firestorm Over Genetic Editing”
This news clip from Uloop inc. by Samantha Long published lately revealed that a Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, created two genetic-edited babies who are immune to HIV. During the author’s interview with other Chinese scientists, she wrote that “‘Pandora's Box has been opened, but we may still have a chance to close it before it is irreparable’, a group of more than 120 Chinese researchers said in a joint statement criticizing the influence of He's work on other scientists.” Ahmed, a genetic counsellor at a private DNA testing lab in Toronto said that “Certainly this is something that the genetics world all thought would possibly happen one day, but I think we were hoping it would happen with a lot more regulation.” No one knows what will happen to the babies created by him, “gene editing is banned in Britain, the United States many other parts of the world, largely because its long-term effects on mental and physical health are poorly understood” noted by Long. Gene editing is an example of good things that has been used in many beneficial perspectives can suddenly become dangerous and unpredictable if they were manipulated by an ignorant scientist who does not care about morality and humanity. This will help my adaptation in which I will provide a scene where a short-viewed leader only sees economic advantage whereas the protagonist sees the deeper meaning and better usage of the artificial sun.
“New surveillance concepts in food safety in meat producing animals: the advantage of high throughput 'omics' technologies--A review”
This review shows that ignorance can cause huge impact on people’s normal life, in terms of food safety. The authors Pfaffl, M. W. and Riedmaier-Sprenzel start the review with a strong statement which read as “The misuse of anabolic hormones or illegal drugs is a ubiquitous problem in animal husbandry and in food safety.” Illegal drugs used in animal husbandry can change “animals’ ‘biomarker signatures’”, in other words, animals’ identities, causing “unpredictable effects to human”. As people buying and cooking these animals for food, “people are ingesting chemicals that could potentially cause effects inside of their bodies”, including DNA and other cells “that can be inherited by their children.” Although this review only shows ignorance in regulation in animal husbandry, it shows that it can also cause lethal results in all the fields and is able to cause huge impact on human society. This review will help form my story by informing a scenario where economic advantage seems ideal to human society, but it will eliminate the passion to adventure into deeper space to find more valuable things than money.
“Artificial Intelligence could be single greatest danger to human security: Adib-Moghaddam”
This news clip is an interview between the author Tehran Times and professor “Arshin Adib-Moghaddam in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies and Chair of the Centre for Iranian Studies at the London Middle East Institute.” During this interview, professor Adib-Moghaddam expressed his worries about the new technology breakthrough – artificial intelligence. Professor Adbi-Moghaddam has “recently extended my research focus in the direction of Artificial Intelligence and its impact on humanity” and he added that: “The first technology that made the sudden end of humanity possible was the atomic bomb -- the second is Artificial Intelligence.” He later gave explanation about his opinion using examples to show how Artificial Intelligence can cause huge danger to human society:
Google only recently declined a Pentagon contract that would have added to existing forms of robotic warfare. This is a scary world that we are maneuvering to. Intellectuals have a duty to assess, and if necessary, to resist, the militarization of AI and the robotization of warfare. In my own research, I see AI as the natural outcome of the scientific determinism embedded in western Enlightenment thought which was always also pregnant with dangers for humanity.
This interview will inform my adaptation that I will highlight the influence of a fanatic belief in economic advantages in current society will have a bad impact in the future of human race.
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
In this book, the author Yuval Noal Harari explains how recent scientific research can potentially have impacts on human society in many different perspectives. In chapter 1 The New Human Agenda, Harari notes that “In seeking bliss and immortality humans are in fact trying to upgrade themselves into gods.” (43) Yet upgrading is not free, only rich people or people that have high social hierarchy can afford to upgrade their bodies or minds. As these people use science to accelerate their evolution, within generations they will have kids who are supermen or superwomen to normal people, and it is very possible for these supermen or superwomen to think that normal people are inferior. “Most of us automatically see animals as essentially different and inferior” (76) Harari wrote, “… they lock animals in tiny cages, mutilate their horns and tails, separate mothers from offspring and selectively breed monstrosities. The animals suffer greatly, yet they live on and multiply.” (79) The creation of supermen and superwomen is obviously a good thing, but the predicted way of them treating normal people is scary and unimaginable. This is another example of the ignorance in people. If scientists develop technologies without concerning about the impacts of the technologies and morality, it will have huge devastating impact on human race.
Works Cited
Tucker, Jonathan B. “Preventing the Misuse of Gene Synthesis: Fostering Industry Self-
Regulation, Backed up with Targeted Government Policies, Is the Best Way to Capture the Benefits and Reduce the Risks of Synthetic Genomics (Double-Edged DNA).” Issues in Science and Technology, no. 3, 2010, p. 23. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=edsric&AN=edsric.A224768966&site=eds-live.
Nourse, Victoria. “When Eugenics Became Law: Victoria Nourse Reviews a Study on a Historic
US Misuse of Biology, the Case of Buck V. Bell.(HISTORY OF SCIENCE).” Nature, no. 7591, 2016, p. 418. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=edsric&AN=edsric.A444595373&site=eds-live.
Long, Samantha. “Chinese Scientist Faces Firestorm Over Genetic Editing.” UWIRE Text,
2018. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.563785151&site=eds-live.
Pfaffl, M. W., and I. Riedmaier-Sprenzel. “New Surveillance Concepts in Food Safety in Meat
Producing Animals: The Advantage of High Throughput ‘Omics’ Technologies - a Review.” Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences, vol. 31, no. 7, July 2018, pp. 1062–1071. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=ffh&AN=2018-12-Sa5555&site=eds-live.
“Artificial Intelligence Could Be Single Greatest Danger to Human Security: Adib-
Moghaddam.” Tehran Times (Tehran, Iran), 2018. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=edsggo&AN=edsgcl.542098225&site=eds-live.
Harari, Yuval N. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. , 2016. Print.
Cixin Liu had generated such a great impact in the field science fiction novels after publishing his work The Wondering Earth. The novel had also been adapted to a movie, which also received great success in China as well as other countries. The charming story in the novel attracts not only Chinese readers but also readers who are reading translated editions. Although the sun is not going to die, the ignorance still exists in humanity. In history, many tragedies have happened because of the ignorance of the leaders or local people. Countless mistakes happened because of ignorance in humanity. For example, the German people blindly chose Adolf Hitler as their choice without knowing enough about his personality, Adolf Hitler confidentially attacked the Soviet Union, Nuclear Bomb was dropped to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Artificial intelligence replaced millions of jobs. Since not much information exists on the internet about the source I chose, my research will focus on the mistakes caused by ignorance of human. The results of this research will lead to my adaptation of the novel – the creation of an artificial sun and how a person turn the sun into the first interstellar spaceship of human race, overturn the current worldview of economic advantage is the first priority, and reignite the hope of human race to discover unfounded places in the universe.
Annotated Bibliography
“Preventing the misuse of gene synthesis: fostering industry self-regulation, backed up with targeted government policies, is the best way to capture the benefits and reduce the risks of synthetic genomics (Double-Edged DNA)” *
This article by Tucker, Jonathan B. deeply talked about how a beneficial science breakthrough now is causing bad results in human because of the ignorance of people. The users was not paying enough attention to what the breakthrough can do and what may it cause in the future. The article shows that as human are able to do more things to help people using science, people are more capable to harm people if we are not careful about using new powers. As scientists accomplished “the feat … to synthesize long strands of DNA and stitch them together into a genome… for poliovirus in 2002, the Spanish influenza virus in 2005, and the SARS virus in 2008” (1) to help people, many scientists worry that “it will soon become technically feasible to synthesize the smallpox virus, a deadly scourge that was eradicated from nature in the late 1970s and currently exists only in a few highly secure repositories.” (1) This piece will help my story by showing how the misusage of a beneficial thing can cause bad results.
“History of Science: When eugenics became Law” *
This article focusses on the devastating consequences of eugenics (later considered as pseudoscience) by examining “the 1927 US Supreme Court case known as Buck v. Bell” (1). During the introduction of the case, the author Victoria Nourse states that,
Eugenics is a well-known low point in the modern history of science. In the United States, from the late nineteenth century to the 1940s, credence was given to this pseudoscience focused on the notional 'improvement' of human populations by halting the reproduction of supposedly lesser genes. Less well known is the story of how US law rendered eugenics intellectually respectable across the world, supporting programmes from Canada to Sweden. Ultimately, this egregious failing led to the enforced sterilization of at least 60,000 US citizens, and was used by the Nazi regime to justify its own programme of sterilization and, later, extermination. (1)
Nourse’s explanation about eugenics is just an example of the ignorance in the leaders can cause damage on their civilians, this shows how leaders’ misunderstandings about new science ideologies or technology breakthroughs can cause huge impact to the whole society. In my adaptation, I will continue this connection between leaders’ decisions about where to apply beneficial things and their social impacts.
“Chinese Scientist Faces Firestorm Over Genetic Editing”
This news clip from Uloop inc. by Samantha Long published lately revealed that a Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, created two genetic-edited babies who are immune to HIV. During the author’s interview with other Chinese scientists, she wrote that “‘Pandora's Box has been opened, but we may still have a chance to close it before it is irreparable’, a group of more than 120 Chinese researchers said in a joint statement criticizing the influence of He's work on other scientists.” Ahmed, a genetic counsellor at a private DNA testing lab in Toronto said that “Certainly this is something that the genetics world all thought would possibly happen one day, but I think we were hoping it would happen with a lot more regulation.” No one knows what will happen to the babies created by him, “gene editing is banned in Britain, the United States many other parts of the world, largely because its long-term effects on mental and physical health are poorly understood” noted by Long. Gene editing is an example of good things that has been used in many beneficial perspectives can suddenly become dangerous and unpredictable if they were manipulated by an ignorant scientist who does not care about morality and humanity. This will help my adaptation in which I will provide a scene where a short-viewed leader only sees economic advantage whereas the protagonist sees the deeper meaning and better usage of the artificial sun.
“New surveillance concepts in food safety in meat producing animals: the advantage of high throughput 'omics' technologies--A review”
This review shows that ignorance can cause huge impact on people’s normal life, in terms of food safety. The authors Pfaffl, M. W. and Riedmaier-Sprenzel start the review with a strong statement which read as “The misuse of anabolic hormones or illegal drugs is a ubiquitous problem in animal husbandry and in food safety.” Illegal drugs used in animal husbandry can change “animals’ ‘biomarker signatures’”, in other words, animals’ identities, causing “unpredictable effects to human”. As people buying and cooking these animals for food, “people are ingesting chemicals that could potentially cause effects inside of their bodies”, including DNA and other cells “that can be inherited by their children.” Although this review only shows ignorance in regulation in animal husbandry, it shows that it can also cause lethal results in all the fields and is able to cause huge impact on human society. This review will help form my story by informing a scenario where economic advantage seems ideal to human society, but it will eliminate the passion to adventure into deeper space to find more valuable things than money.
“Artificial Intelligence could be single greatest danger to human security: Adib-Moghaddam”
This news clip is an interview between the author Tehran Times and professor “Arshin Adib-Moghaddam in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies and Chair of the Centre for Iranian Studies at the London Middle East Institute.” During this interview, professor Adib-Moghaddam expressed his worries about the new technology breakthrough – artificial intelligence. Professor Adbi-Moghaddam has “recently extended my research focus in the direction of Artificial Intelligence and its impact on humanity” and he added that: “The first technology that made the sudden end of humanity possible was the atomic bomb -- the second is Artificial Intelligence.” He later gave explanation about his opinion using examples to show how Artificial Intelligence can cause huge danger to human society:
Google only recently declined a Pentagon contract that would have added to existing forms of robotic warfare. This is a scary world that we are maneuvering to. Intellectuals have a duty to assess, and if necessary, to resist, the militarization of AI and the robotization of warfare. In my own research, I see AI as the natural outcome of the scientific determinism embedded in western Enlightenment thought which was always also pregnant with dangers for humanity.
This interview will inform my adaptation that I will highlight the influence of a fanatic belief in economic advantages in current society will have a bad impact in the future of human race.
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
In this book, the author Yuval Noal Harari explains how recent scientific research can potentially have impacts on human society in many different perspectives. In chapter 1 The New Human Agenda, Harari notes that “In seeking bliss and immortality humans are in fact trying to upgrade themselves into gods.” (43) Yet upgrading is not free, only rich people or people that have high social hierarchy can afford to upgrade their bodies or minds. As these people use science to accelerate their evolution, within generations they will have kids who are supermen or superwomen to normal people, and it is very possible for these supermen or superwomen to think that normal people are inferior. “Most of us automatically see animals as essentially different and inferior” (76) Harari wrote, “… they lock animals in tiny cages, mutilate their horns and tails, separate mothers from offspring and selectively breed monstrosities. The animals suffer greatly, yet they live on and multiply.” (79) The creation of supermen and superwomen is obviously a good thing, but the predicted way of them treating normal people is scary and unimaginable. This is another example of the ignorance in people. If scientists develop technologies without concerning about the impacts of the technologies and morality, it will have huge devastating impact on human race.
Works Cited
Tucker, Jonathan B. “Preventing the Misuse of Gene Synthesis: Fostering Industry Self-
Regulation, Backed up with Targeted Government Policies, Is the Best Way to Capture the Benefits and Reduce the Risks of Synthetic Genomics (Double-Edged DNA).” Issues in Science and Technology, no. 3, 2010, p. 23. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=edsric&AN=edsric.A224768966&site=eds-live.
Nourse, Victoria. “When Eugenics Became Law: Victoria Nourse Reviews a Study on a Historic
US Misuse of Biology, the Case of Buck V. Bell.(HISTORY OF SCIENCE).” Nature, no. 7591, 2016, p. 418. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=edsric&AN=edsric.A444595373&site=eds-live.
Long, Samantha. “Chinese Scientist Faces Firestorm Over Genetic Editing.” UWIRE Text,
2018. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.563785151&site=eds-live.
Pfaffl, M. W., and I. Riedmaier-Sprenzel. “New Surveillance Concepts in Food Safety in Meat
Producing Animals: The Advantage of High Throughput ‘Omics’ Technologies - a Review.” Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences, vol. 31, no. 7, July 2018, pp. 1062–1071. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=ffh&AN=2018-12-Sa5555&site=eds-live.
“Artificial Intelligence Could Be Single Greatest Danger to Human Security: Adib-
Moghaddam.” Tehran Times (Tehran, Iran), 2018. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=edsggo&AN=edsgcl.542098225&site=eds-live.
Harari, Yuval N. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. , 2016. Print.