Science is a great thing that we have produced and advanced in. It gave humanity improvements and also improved our knowledge of those around us. Science, to us, is a blessing and a whole new world. However, what if science, which gave us power and knowledge, instead doomed us all and destroyed humanity? It isn’t impossible, since in Ray Bradbury’s “Sound of Thunder” humanity changed because time travelled and changed the past. But what if we were to develop the kind of technology that lets us travel the past or stop time itself? What would happen? Science is a really helpful tool to humanity, but we also need to be weary of it, or else it could be our downfall.
Many of you have heard of time traveling and most of you would probably agree that it is useful. We could stop important people from getting hurt, change our future, and stop the extinction of a kind of animal. But time traveling is also really risky. If you change one small thing, like leaving the lights on or throw a twig at a dog, then the future might change entirely. This one small action could create a big ripple in time, thus being known as the “Ripple Effect”. In “Sound of Thunder”, the ripple effect is portrayed when the protagonist accidentally killed a butterfly from the prehistoric age. When he travelled to present time, a complete nation and language changed, just because of this one stone thrown in the pond of time. This ripple effect would be a very bad side effect that could cause the downside of humanity.
Another dangerous thing is science not doing its job. If somebody was to make a robot that does surgery, then the robot would be handling somebody’s life. A person’s life would be at stake, and if the robot was to fail its mission, than the person would die. Well, robots are more efficient than humans so the risk should be the same or less right? Well, thats wrong because even if a robot is more precise and quick, robots lack experience and emotion. Humans differentiate from robots because of this. Humans could make ethically right actions, while robots only do what it is supposed to do. If a military robot was to wipe out a whole army, there will be no lives at stake. But if wiping out the whole army involves destroying a whole town, humans would probably think twice before blasting. But robots wouldn’t since its main and only objective is to destroy the enemy. Thousands of innocent lives would be at stake.
Lastly, is a kind of technology that is very dangerous. Stopping time. Sure, stopping time could help in lots of situations and would be really handy, however, stopping time would mean that time would be frozen everywhere. Throughout the whole universe, time will be stopped. But time has stopped so if you were to move, that would be impossible. If that time-stopper had a red button on it and you just pressed it, then you can’t unstop time again! Time would be forever stopped, and nothing will happen again. But what if you were to be able to move when you stop time. Changing one small thing, like the ripple effect would cause a big disturbance. This concept of manipulating time and space is very risky and it wouldn’t be like exploring a whole new world. Instead, it will be like exploring a dungeon full of traps when we are blindfolded. We don’t know what to be cautious of and we don’t know solutions to problems that has never happened before.
Overall, science is a really risky tool that humanity has, but it has proved itself useful many times throughout the course of history. It let us explore things that were dreamed of by humans, and let us advance civilization at a speed that has never been shown before. However science isn’t to mess around with and could come with huge consequences if played around with. We need to be weary of what we do with science and we need to be cautious.