Summary Of Michael Crichton's Prey

Prey is a novel written by Michael Crichton who was well recognize for his science and medical fiction work. The novel start as first person narration with main character Jack Forman, who study population biology and then became computer programmed which allow him to write his own code for his research. These later allow him to develop a career in the computer field. Julia whom is Jack wife’s who is high executives at Xymos technology company .Theses two has three children Nicole, Eric and Amanda. The main topic of the novel is the nanotechnology and thorough the story we see several different dilemmas like succeed, science and artificial intelligent. Also nowadays our society has many new technologies that are been use in similar manner as nanotechnology as it is cloning.
Nanotechnology “is science, engineering, and technology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about 1 to 100
nanometers. Nanoscience and nanotechnology are the study and application of extremely small things and can be used across all the other science fields, such as chemistry, biology, physics, materials science, and engineering.”In addition, “as a concept nanotechnology dates back to 1959 speech by Richard Feynman called “There is plenty Room at the Bottom” (xi).In today world the nanotechnology is been use in many product as for example in sunscreen, to keep some product like beer fresh and also and some medical test like pregnancy test. And we provable will be seeing many new things in near future that will be beneficial for our society.
There are several benefit from nanotechnology some of them are that with the increase of nanotechnology as for expel create smaller, lighter thing and cost saving. Also using more nanotechnology the medical field can see dramatic improvement in things like generic test or preventing diseases it might also help to clean the environment.
However, there are lot things that can go wrong with nanotechnology. Because nanotechnology can make thing extremely smaller this could be very dangerous for our society as a whole. “The nanorobots can also be used as dangerous weapons by the terrorists, as these robots are nearly untraceable.”
In addition, there are also severe health problems if nanorobots land up inadvertently in the human body. There have been reposts and cases of employees or workers at paint factories suffering from lung diseases due to the inhaled nanoparticles.”Also With nanotechnology, there is the possibility of developing self replicating weapons.”
Thought the book we see how the story faced several dilemmas.
First we see how Julia who is evidently self centered person and is drive by her own desires to success putting t in risk herself and her family. She make her youngest daughter sick after been expose to nanoparticles and then exposed herself and become infected by the swarm .Then we have Jack who seem to always look to do the right thing for everyone wellbeing.
On the other hand we have Jack the leading character and narrator in day 1 he narrated how he got fired from Media Tronics after find out that one Don Gross high executive of the company was doing illegal activities.He also has put up with Julia’s selfishness just to keep their family together. Later he again he is hired for Media Tronics but this time a consultant, the company need him to help fixd some issues they were having with system sold to Xymos.
While he is working at Xymos plant and discovered that what that “unable to construct genuine nanossembler Xymos was using to crank out molecules. This was generic engineering, not nanotechnology”(P135).
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Another technology that is being use in our society is cloning. “Clones are organisms that are exact genetic copies. Every single bit of their DNA is identical.”Cloning can be done natural and artificial. Natural cloning can happen in human for example identical twins which is the product of fertilize egg that split in two and produce almost the same identical DNA.But cloning had never being done in human because the ethical and medical issues. Naturally cloning happens every day and plant and single organism like bacteria.
Artificial cloning in plant and animal can have many benefit for our or world. By cloning animal could help to increase the supply for meat and milk. Also the medical field could great benefit by cloning some animal like “animals such as goats, cows and sheep are sources of protein. The sheep, for example are great sources of protein needed in the science of medicine, particularly in human blood clothing. By applying the science of animal cloning, shortage of protein sources and vaccines derived from animals can be resolved.”
In addition by cloning plants will be “helpful for agriculture sector, as the crop yield will become much more predictable and reliable. Also the process of reproduce faster than their normal counterparts, which means the period between planting and harvesting will be reduced by a significant extent.” However the process of cloning has it own disadvantaged of cloning could be the high cost, consuming products from cloning it might carrier some health issues.

References: https://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/what/definition Hinman, L. M., & Hinman, L. M. (2013). Ethics: a pluralistic approach to moral theory (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Pub Co.

http://healthresearchfunding.org/pros-cons-nanotechnology/

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/cloning/whatiscloning/