Moral And Ethical Dilemmas Of Technology

The idea of pursuing knowledge clouded Victor’s mind and when his creature is born he is shocked to discover that what he has created is far off his own expectations. Not only did the monster destroy his expectations of developing a creature that went beyond human knowledge, but it also affected his life, dignity, and fears. Victor himself admits to his own mistake when he says, “The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature...but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless honor and disgust filled my heart ” (36). Victor Frankenstein realizes what his obsession with pursuing an extensive amount of knowledge has brought him. His destiny to achieve the impossible with no regard for anyone or anything but himself shows that he is blinded by knowledge when creating the monster and is incapable to foresee the outcome of his creation. Victor’s goal was meant to improve and help humanity, but instead it leads to

Secondly, what is the definition of technology? “Technology is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry; ‘advances in computer technology", machinery and equipment developed from the application of scientific knowledge, the branch of knowledge dealing with engineering or applied sciences.”

Knowledge plays an incredibly large part of Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein. I think that Victor’s obsessive and unhealthy search for knowledge is the true cause of his suffering. Not only does he neglect his friends and family while working to create the monster he puts his own health in danger. “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health.” In this quote we see that Victor stops at nothing to find if he would be successful with his creation. Victor has made this project such a main priority that once it is completed and the creature comes to life he does not know what to do. Since Victor has met his goals and done what he said he wanted to do he does not want to deal with the being he just created so this becomes a problem for him. We see that Victor was very troubled by this whole experience when he says, “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.”

Perhaps Victor had not realized that "…the power to create may produce consequences that cannot be foreseen or controlled" (Smolensky 1756). Before Frankenstein created his creature, he had not intended it to be a threat to his friends and family. He had also not realized that evil creates evil (Mellor Mary Shelley 363). In this novel, Victor did not only act in monstrous way toward his creature, but toward his loved ones as well. When he learned that his youngest brother William had been murdered, he knew right away that the murder was committed by his very own creation, but refused to speak up and say anything about his knowledge. He knew that he would be held responsible for the murder because of the fact that he created the monster, and also because the monster killed his

In the beginning of Frankenstein, Victor´s begin on a quest to discover how to prolong life, which sounds reasonable in theory. He was at fault though for rushing in headfirst to the process of creation, he did not consult any of his peers or professors about what the implications of such an event might bring to the world. He did not prepare for having another life in his hands when the creation would be complete. All that Victor saw was the attention he would garner from succeeding at his experiment, not how the result would pan out. This comes to light when the creation process is finished and the Creation rises. Victor did not try to interact with his work, instead he immediately acts with disgust and fear. If he had been thinking about what the result would entail, he would have known that a body made of human corpses would not be attractive to the human eye, and that the body would be of larger stature. Victor hurries out of his lab, hoping to never see the Creation again. How could he immediately abandon the life that he had just brought into the world, leaving the Creation to basically die? The face of horror and subsequent fleeing immediately made the Creation feel he was at the wrong, when he did not ask to be brought to life, nor did he attack Victor in any way.

If Victor were born with negative traits, he would not have wanted to follow in his parent’s footsteps. The reason for him creating the monster was because of his surroundings at Ingolstadt. His professors, such as, “M. Krempe, professor of natural philosophy. He was an uncouth man, but deeply embued in the secrets of his science… The professor stared: ‘Have you,’ he said, ‘really spent your time in studying such nonsense?’” (Shelley 51) pushed the new ways of science on him causing him to see the possibilities of modern society. The movie portrays this more than the book does, which is good. We see Victor’s professor try to keep him away from the notes and readings on how to create life; if Victor never saw these notes, would he have been able to

Victor Frankenstein was not only a scientist, but also a creator, and father. He brought his creature to life, but then instead of putting its visual misfortune aside, he ran from it, out of fear. This is similar to Boo Radley in “To Kill A Mockingbird” in the sense that people immediately fear things that do not look like themselves. All of that aside Frankenstein should have helped his creation to understand the world before casting it out. With the circumstances given to him, the creature did the best he could.

For the moment that is anyways, when it finally hits him, he does not know what to think at all. While discussing his discovery, Frankenstein states, “Life and death appeared to be ideal bounds, which I should first break through and pour a torrent of light into our dark world” (Shelley 40). Being a scientist, there a boundaries you should stay in and procreation should be number 1. Victor saw otherwise and sees death as an okay topic to alter. He figured, why not do the impossible, why not bring life to the nonliving. He describe life as light in this statement and wants to show the world what is

Victor neglects his responsibility and duty to the monster. He allows the monster to roam free and who knows what it could have done. Not to mention it was clear that the monster was intelligent from the start, “not only does the creature have an intellect, but he becomes more human as he evolves away from his creator” (Delmont). Victor didn’t even try to connect with the creature or teach it anything. Therefore the monster became angry and lonely and it started killing people, “once set loose in the world of ‘Frankenstein’, murder seems to spread like a plague” (Sayres). Victor knew he had a responsibility to the monster, “I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled furiously” (Shelley). He’s saying that he knew the monster was going to be a problem but he fought his responsibility of owning up to the creature. In the wake of Victor’s neglect to the monster and the bond it entailed, Victor’s family and friends suffered for it. People not only have a responsibility to their self but also other people. Mary uses, Frankenstein, as a model of how responsibility is intertwine between people and the effects it can cause if taken

Victor, possessed by the immediate construction of his monster, did not consider the long term affects of creating such a being. The consequences, of course, proved to be extremely negative, and could have been prevented if Victor had paused to consider. After Frankenstein’s experience with the monster and all the tragedy it brings him, he says, “My imagination was vivid, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense; by the union of these qualities I conceived the idea and executed the creation of a man. Even now I cannot recollect without passion my reveries while the work was incomplete. I trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects,” (Shelley 167). Unfortunately, Frankenstein realized his mistaken mindset too late, and desperately desired to have known what effects his power would have before he let his ambition consume him. As the novel proceeds, Frankenstein also did not imagine the consequences of abandoning his creation. Once he found that his creation had disappeared, he was relived and did not stop to consider the effects of letting a new species run wild in the countryside. If he would have considered these consequences, many deaths could have been avoided. For a brief moment, Frankenstein sympathized with the monster and created a companion for him, but

I admire Victor Frankenstein creative ability to utilize his scientific knowledge to figure out how to create a man. In order to accomplish this goal, I am impressed at the inordinate amount of time Victor spent studying and learning how the body works in order to create a human monster. To me that’s impressive but Victor is extremely irresponsible by not including anyone when he is creating another human. He is selfish and careless in his scientific research. When Frankenstein comes to life he does not tell anyone about the human creature he created leaving the creature off into the world with no guidance. Victor’s irresponsibility of not understanding the capabilities of his scientific research and abandoning it makes him careless and jeopardizes society. The decision not to locate the creature and humanize

Technology, broadly defined as the use of tools, has a long history. Ever since Erg the caveman first conked an animal with a rock, people have been using technology. For thousands of years, the use of tools allowed people to move ever closer together. Because fields could be cultivated and the technology to store food existed, people would live in cities rather than in small nomadic tribes. Only very lately have Erg's descendants come to question the benefits of technology. The Industrial Revolution introduced and spread technologies that mechanized many tasks. As a result of the drive toward more efficient production and distribution (so the ever larger cities would be supported), people began to act as cogs in the technological machine. Clothing was no longer produced by groups of women sewing and gossiping together, but by down-trodden automation's operating machinery in grim factories.

His hypothesis was that through the power of nature, he could reanimate organic tissue which his chosen mentors had claimed to achieve. Though Victor Frankenstein’s experimentation required a form, which took him to the charnel houses to claim tissue from the deceased. The creature was complete with the animating science developed by Victor Frankenstein. His hypothesis proved true in the respect that it could give life. Throughout the process he underwent to create the creature at no time in the process was there a point to reflect as to whether or not he should create such a monster. There was no point in the process to stop and contemplate the possible outcome of his experiment and its effect on humanity. Victor Frankenstein followed the scientific process to the letter of the word, without trepidation as to his actions. There was no point, as it was not ascribed to be essential to the course of discovery. Victor Frankenstein’s creation was not completely due to his own scientific irresponsibility, it is due to the scientific community whose emphasis on the if we can do something outweighed the decision of whether or not we should do something. There is no safeguard to this question of advancement or what is beneficial to humanity. Victor Frankenstein performed his profession and found it to be lacking in this one area, and he would pay for it in the lives the creature would soon end. Victor

Victor does not take responsibility for his creation. Victor disrupted the natural order of things by creating the monster. He also knew that leaving the monster was wrong but he did anyway because he did not want to deal with the repercussions of being the person who created the monster. Victor neglects his own moral responsibility in this book. He leaves the monster with no help, no care, and no love (“An Overview of Frankenstein”). Victor is an irresponsible character and that ultimately leads to the major downfall of the book. If Victor would have been there for the monster and taught him things then maybe the monster would not be so angry with the world and would have refrained from killing innocent people. The monster was not trying to hurt these people all he was concerned about what was getting back at Victor for leaving him behind. Victor was obviously a smart man he just made a careless and selfish decision by leaving the monster. He was looking out for himself and watching his own back to protect his reputation and not have to deal with criticism from other people.

Technology is a Greek word taken from the blend of a couple of words: techne (meaning art) and logos (meaning logic or science). So approximately deciphered, technology implies the craft of rationale or the specialty of experimental control. Formally, it has been characterized by Everett M. Rogers "a design for instrumental action that reduces the uncertainty in the cause-effect relationships involved in achieving a desired outcome" (as cited in Mason, n.d). That is, technology includes both unmistakable items, for an example, the PC, and information about methodologies and strategies, such as the technology of large scale manufacturing presented by Henry Ford and others (Mason, n.d).