Nicolas Pol: Outside Reading: Frankenstein's Cat

I have been reading a book outside of class, but I think it connects to a lot of the themes of our class. 

Frankenstein's Cat is a book written by Emily Anthes, a scientist in biotechnology. The book covers many crazy topics, such as medicine-producing goats, cyborg cats, and glow-in-the dark puppies. 

While the book reaches the very edges of biotechnology, Anthes continuously stops to ask moral questions about our use of technology. 

For example, Anthes compares ornamental fish to the transgenetic GloFish (tropical Tetra species injected with jellyfish chromosomes to "glow in the dark"). The GloFish are called into question for being unethical. Yet, Anthes levels the plane to point out that our lower-technology version of customizing pets, which is selective breeding, is equally as harmful. "Those ornamental goldfish varieties that we've created to have eerie, unearthly eyes -- enlarged and bulging, or covered by enormous growths, or positioned to look upwards to the sky (therefore always looking at the fish's owner) -- can be nearly blind. From an ethical standpoint, isn't a fully functional transgenic fish preferable to an artificially selected but severely handicapped one?" (Anthes 28). 

In class, we have talked about Kevin Burke's concept of the machine. According to Burke, the machine is the sum of man's technology. Man made technology, in the hopes that it would make nature adapt to man. Yet, the machine has made man adapt to technology. In a way, humanity has become subservient to its creation of technology. 

Another concept of Burke's is the clock. In our culture, our lives are essentially controlled by technology. We eat, sleep, work, and play based on the hour that our machine tells us. The clock, even though it is not alive, nor is it aware that it exists, has essentially ruled over the scope of Westernized humanity. 

While the clock does not rule over the animals, that does not mean that our technology can't fill the gap. As the book explores, we do have the technology to control the thoughts and movements of animals. The clock, which cannot be perceived by animals, still has the capacity to rule over them. 

The animals described in Frankenstein's Cat seem to be victims of the machine. Sure, we can steer our household cats with a remote control (yes, that's a thing!), but hasn't that cat been ripped from its natural form? And furthermore, is there a moral limit to how much technology is too much technology?