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Stories about “science gone awry” are almost always about non-scientists screwing up.
https://jurassicpark.fandom.com/wiki/Dennis_Nedry
Dennis Theodore[1] Nedry was the main antagonist during the first half of the original Jurassic Park film. He was a computer programmer at Jurassic Park. Due to his financial problems and low salary, he accepted a bribe from Biosyn to smuggle dinosaur embryos off the island.
In both the film and the novel, he is slain by a Dilophosaurus. He was directly responsible for the events that happened in both the novel and film. A combination of factors led to his demise: despite working in a career around dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, he had a limited knowledge of them, and greed, which was intertwined by desperation to pay off his debt collectors and make himself rich after that.
If anything Jurassic park is basically a lesson in properly vetting your staff.
Everything that happened happened because Dennis was the only IT guy and basically could do whatever he wanted with zero oversight. It’s not like the dinosaurs were going to break out on their own, even the raptors only got out because the fences were turned off.
It still comes down to Hammond not paying Nedry enough although he claimed he “spared no expenses”.
Spared no expense on HR, contact lawyers, and icecream.
The science also went wrong a lil bit. The Dinos weren’t supposed to be able to breed being all females; but they used frog DNA so some the dinos ended up turning into males and began breeding.
Seems like the “dire wolf” and “wooly mammoth” thing happened even in fiction; they weren’t actually dinosaurs. They were frogs that looked like dinosaurs.
It never would have happened if they just had stronger laws preventing the dinos from having easy access to gender affirming care.
You are under the assumption the scientists listened to the bean counters. I on the otherhand think it’s more likely that any (mad) scientist who could make dinofrogs via genetic manipulation would intentionally splice the ability to self-transition into their creation.
“Demand I make my dinofrogs infertile will you!? I’ll show you… I’ll show all of you!!!”
strange they dint use bird eggs, or reptiles, as amphibians are pretty far removed from a dinosaur , distantly related.
In the books, and movie iirc, they used DNA from all three, not just frogs, to replace missing segments of the dino DNA.
It was just that Dr.Grant guessed at it being amphibian DNA that had the unintentional side effect of allowing some of the dinos to change sex (which is a thing called sequential hermaphroditism) when he finds the velociraptor eggs.
No no no, it’s all about paying your IT people well and being nice to them. If John had been nice to Needry, then Needry wouldn’t have needed to betray him. Pay your IT people, be nice to them and everything would have been fine.
Worst I can do if my boss pisses me off it’s change his password on a Friday, and then go home.
Hammond literally goes around gaslighting the entire group by saying “spared no expense” when in reality he cheaped out and cut every corner. His undoing was Dennis, who was the lowest bidder in a security contract. Instead of picking the absolute best, Hammond went with the lowest bidders. Even the T. rex fence should not have been so easy to break down, power or not. The entire park was built cheap and fast. Hammond was a capitalist playing conservationist.
I mean, it’s about both, but… do people really not catch the whole angle about capitalism and greed? Newman straight up gets everyone killed for a pay day, and doesn’t even make it out himself. The only way it could be more obvious is if it had giant flash red text.
Majority of people rarely engage with any media beyond the surface to actually analyze it and come to those conclusions about the deeper themes. Most just think “well, that’s just people being people” and fail to see the social commentary.
More a reflection of people’s attention spans these days compared to when the movie is released. Read any online discussion about media and it seems like people are on their phones for 40% of the show at minimum.
Hell the original film would probably not do well if released today because it doesn’t have the obvious shoehorned plot points that the new movies have to cut through the morons.
There were plenty of morons in the 80s and 90s. Half the population suffered from severe lead poisoning. The other half were hopped up on neo liberal propaganda.
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Jurassic Park is about capitalist hubris.
Jurassic World is about why we should not allow BD Wong to create the reptilian equivalent of the torment nexus.
gloriously right
Not really. The dinos were half-baked imitations, not exact replicas. And they evolved in ways the scientists didn’t anticipate, because their reach exceeded their grasp.
There’s definitely an anti-capitalist message, but don’t dismiss the warning about prematurely greenlighting high-stakes scientific initiatives. That’s relevant to the modern world, no matter what our economic model is.
LLMs come to mind. There’s a section of the AI-skeptic folks that say the only problem with AI is the profit motive. I’m not so sure. People will use tech to do all kinds of horrible shit even if they don’t stand to materially benefit. Just look at 4chan.
I saw one of the more recent-ish movies. One of the dinosaurs removed its subdermal tracking device and the humans find it because it has a big blinking light bulb on it. A big blinking light bulb on a subdermal tracker. Are these movies self aware? Was that supposed to be a joke?
The tracker must have been made by the same manufacturer that makes all those bombs you see in movies, too. You can tell because they have beepers, digital countdown displays, and sometimes also blinking lights.
ACME™
I mean, the science did go wrong too. They tried making dinosaurs all one gender but used DNA from an animal that can spontaneously switch genders. Sounds like they fucked up to me.
Anyone that thinks that dinosaurs are amphibians shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a DNA sequencer.
None of it was because the scientists thought that dinosaurs were amphibians. In the lore of the books, DNA from reptiles, avians, and amphibians were used to fill in gaps in the dino DNA.
The book explains that the DNA used to fill those gap was chosen specifically for certain traits that would make for more attractive or durable creatures for the theme park, highlighting how what was being done “in the name of science” actually had nothing to do with any real scientific progress or discovery.
Without capitalism, maybe they wouldn’t have continued when they found out there wasn’t enough DNA for complete dinosaurs.
Or maybe they would have had enough time to think things through, and use safer/more appropriate replacement DNA.
Just spit balling.
Yeah, “good enough to keep making money” is a very capitalist mindset.
It’s funny though, reading those books it seems that Michael Crichton has deep disdain for scientists.
He had a deep distain for the privatization of science.
Even the capitalist hubris is done wrong.
They knew how to activate the dwarfism gene. They could have been selling pygmy raptors and rexes as pets to everyone. At the right size they’d be no more dangerous than dogs or cats.
But no; we need a theme park that eats people.
How am I supposed to ride a pigmy T-rex into battle, wielding two m16s, and screaming “America!”, then?
Chariots, string the t-rexes together like sled dogs, though now I think about it raptors might be better suited.
Okay, the chance to become a deranged santa-esque madman with pigmy T-rexes instead of reindeer is too good to pass up. Sign me up for 8!
Ingen went all “move fast, break things” but with genetically engineered apex predators. Pretty much worked out exactly as expected.
The bio science was averaging success. Not their fault that the IT dept fumbled the ball.
Comrade Lysenko would never have permitted this
