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Edward Sorin
Prey by Michael Crichton Harper collins, 2002 352 pp.; $26.95 |
Michael Crichton's new novel, Prey, is another of his cautionary tales about humankind's technological hubris. When greed, ambition, arrogance, and an all-too-prevalent ignorance mix with new technology that we lack sufficient wisdom to employ, disaster is bound to follow. Instead of genetics and dinosaurs (Jurassic Park) or extraterrestrial microbes (The Andromeda Strain), humans get their comeuppance this time from a nasty combination of nanotechnology and artificial life.
Like many of Crichton's novels, Prey is really a movie concept preparing for the big screen. Computer-generated images of deadly swarms of nanoparticles, a menacing slow pan of a high-tech plant standing in stark contrast to the surrounding desert, the typecast actors who one-dimensionally populate—and are predictably sacrificed—in Crichton's stories: all this must be dancing in the head of a filmmaker even now.
But in fairness, Crichton doesn't seem to strive for high or thoughtful art. An enormously gifted storyteller with an instinct for hot-button issues, he seeks both to entertain and to scare us into considering prospectively the new technologies we are uncritically creating and embracing. Indeed, in one of the few novels this reviewer has encountered with an author's introduction, Crichton indicates his sincere concern about self-replicating, potentially autonomous, technology.
He is certainly not alone in these concerns. In a world of increasing techno-utopianism, we need blunt reminders that we aren't as smart as we think we are. But to have an actual impact on our thinking and on public discussion, the message must be delivered with credibility, and this is where Prey fails. Indeed, because Crichton flagrantly oversteps himself on several critical issues, many members of the nanotech community have dismissed the book outright, missing the legitimate concerns otherwise raised.
Nanotechnology involves engineering at the nanoscale level—that is, one-billionth of a meter—and manipulating matter at the atomic and molecular level. Nanotech is a rapidly growing area of investigation and investment. In 2003, the U.S. government will commit nearly one billion dollars in support for nanoscale research and development through the National Nanotechnology Initiative (www.nano.gov), including funds committed via the Department of Defense to the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (hence Crichton's premise of dod support for the original project of the developers in Prey). Most of the research in nanotech at present is committed to materials processing and development of nanoscale electronic devices, such as carbon nanowires, which will dramatically reduce the size of electronic components, facilitating the development of wearable computers and other ubiquitous forms of computing.
Others, however, are looking at using already existing nanoscale machinery, the components of living cells and viruses, in new and human-directed ways. For example, investigators at Cornell devised a way to attach a metal propeller to an enzyme critical to energy utilization inside living cells to create nanoscale motors. At the end of 2002, Joseph Jacobson at mit reported work in which gold nanoparticles were attached to a specific enzyme. The gold particle served as an antenna for a radio-frequency signal which could turn the enzyme function on and off at will. At the same time another group has published results using bacteria to produce a specific enzyme that will be used in the production of smaller electronic devices. Crichton's human antagonists similarly used bacteria to begin the production of the nanobots. This so-called "bottom-up" approach to nanoscale engineering is a very logical and cost-effective tool. After all, the most efficient molecular factories we know about are living cells.
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