blog




  • Essay / Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Technology

    “COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY”: this is the motto of the World State in the science fiction novel “Brave New World” written by Aldous Leonard Huxley in 1932. Huxley predicted the future world ironically, and I guess everyone hopes his prediction doesn't come true. Fortunately, Huxley's Brave New World is only a fictional world; no one knows whether Huxley's Brave New World will become a reality or not. However, technology is rapidly improving and scaring people with the idea that their world is gradually moving closer to Huxley's Brave New World. So my question is: “Could Brave New World become a reality?” » The answer is “yes”. Recent research shows the success of cloning and preventing aging in animal experiments, implying that the technology we currently have can realize parts of Huxley's Brave New World in the non-human animal kingdom. Therefore, technology could also realize Huxley's Brave New World at the human level. Additionally, the current Brave New World may be even more extreme due to immortality and therefore future scientists and engineers must make appropriate choices in order to prevent an extremely totalitarian community. To begin with, cloning is a process that produces a set of genes that contains the same set of genes, and Huxley's Brave New World depicts a human cloning society. In general, people think of cloning as a process of duplicating something that already exists. A scientific article defines the word cloning as “[a process producing] an individual developed from a single somatic cell of its parent and generically identical to it” (Fackelmann 92). However, this definition only defines somatic cell cloning, which is one of the types of cloning. DNA cloning, cellular cloning, and generic cloning are examples of the other types... middle of article...... 1997): 349-352. JSTOR. Internet. November 19, 2013. Fackelmann, Kathy. “Cloning of human embryos”. Society for Science and the Public (1994): 92-93. JSTOR.Web. December 8, 2013. Goldman, Bruce. “Scientists discover blood factors that appear to cause aging in the brains of mice.”Stanford School of Medicine. Np, August 31, 2011. Web. December 11, 2013 “History of cloning”. Harvard Medical School. Np, and Web. December 10, 2013.Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1950. Print. “Scientists hope to clone extinct species. » CNN. Cable News Network, November 4, 2008. Web. 20Nov. 2013. Woiak, Joanne. “Designing a brave new world: eugenics, politics and fiction. » The Public Historian (2007): 105-129. JSTOR. Internet. December 10, 2013. “Young Blood Revives Aging Muscles, Stanford Researchers Say.” » Stanford School of Medicine. Np, February 16, 2005 Web. December 11. 2013.