Hey, Science, Can We Slow Down the Rush to Dystopia?

Architecture student Andre Ford wants to grow brain-dead chickens like grapes. DARPA is developing androids that a person can control on the battlefield like the movie Avatar. And then there are the genius scientists who cooked up an airborne, extra-deadly version of bird flu for no apparent reason.

Manhattan Project scientists were not so cavalier about turning the world into a living nightmare. Men like Einstein and Oppenheimer agonized over what they were doing and that was in the midst of a war that was seemingly for the existential survival of the free world. The stakes could not have been higher.

Yet, here we are, less than 70 years later, high-fiving in the lab about brewing up Mega AIDS and teaching a Roomba to double-tap tangos. It's not hubris or moral atrophy, it's the complete detachment of actions from consequences.

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