Adapting for Climate Change Through CRISPR Crops and Automated Aerial Applications

• In Event: The Future Will Be Terrible

Abstract

Main Arguments. New scientific or technological innovations are often accompanied by unanticipated, unintended and undesirable consequences, to which I would add unrecognized consequences. By looking at the intended, anticipated and desirable consequences of combining two existing technologies, we may reveal unrecognized consequences that exist, but are overshadowed by the desired, anticipated and intended consequences.
Methods. This is a thought experiment given as a persuasive presentation for potential investors who might fund a new system combining CRISPR gene-splicing technology with automated personal flying machines modified for aerial applications purposes to overcome potential food production problems brought on by global climate change. The emphasis of this presentation would be to show the advantages of allowing farmers to rapidly adapt their crops to climate change with a minimum of both cost and human labor, while downplaying the likelihood that farmers might also use the system to take over neighboring farms or sabotage their competitors' crops.
Contributions to STS. Improving visibility of what may otherwise remain invisible consequences of new scientific or technological innovations, particularly the potentially unrecognized consequences. This presentation would also serve to highlight the role of social construction in both the entrepreneur's and the investors' roles of presenting and evaluating a new innovation by showing how an initial inclination to rapidly adopt a solution to an urgent problem could blind people to what might otherwise be recognized as a solution worse than the original problem.

Author

• J.P. DeMeritt, Texas Woman's University