Really? Been hearing this for a while now, though.

Well, as the economists say, this time it’s different. Let me give you two specific examples, one from culture and one from science.

Shoot.

The first example comes from Netflix. Bandersnatch , an original film by Charlie Brooker who is the creator of popular techno-dystopian web-series Black Mirror , that the streaming giant released a few weeks ago literally allowed the viewer to choose how it progressed by offering him multiple scenarios to choose from while watching the film. This basically meant that the viewer can control the fate of the characters and, philosophically speaking, the viewer becomes an integral part of the show and, in fact, ceases to be a viewer.

The death of the viewer! That’s some disruption I’d say.

You said it. Remember ‘The Death of the Author’, an idea French literary critic Roland Barthes put forward in the 1960s? Jargons apart, Barthes meant that when analysing a work of art, the identity of the author is irrelevant and what actually matters is what the reader perceives out of the work. Simply put, the reader owns the meaning (or meanings) of the work. There were many similar attempts that came later in the history where theorists and artists tried to subvert the meaning of a work of art by disrupting the very ideas of appreciation and creation.

That’s interesting.

Now, to suitably exaggerate, Bandersnatch , with its ‘interactive’ content is disrupting art further, by allowing the viewers (the ones who appreciates it) to shed their neutral role as mute spectators and become responsible for the actions of the characters. That’s like inviting them to become de facto authors. Imagine if you have the power to tell Othello to stop being stupid and tell him how exactly the silly ‘handkerchief’ ended up in the custody of Cassio, how cool that would be? A lot of bloodshed would have been avoided.

Then there won’t be an Othello, I suppose.

Yes, sire! And that takes us to the critics of such disruption who, unlike this writer who’s sitting on the fence on the issue, say that such movements will change art as we have known it because it goes against the fundamentals of art, which includes unpredictability.

But in Bandersnatch you still don’t know how it is going to end, right?

Agreed, but by allowing multiple endings to the story, and offering the viewer more (different) chances to experience the same art form, you are spoiling its identity. To use a crude example, as one critic put it, no one dies multiple times. By creating multiple endings the creator kills ‘art form’ (cinema, here) and makes it a ‘gimmick (game)’.

That’s very loaded, I’d say.

If so, my next example is even more loaded. Just recently, Chinese scientist He Jiankui claimed that he had edited the genes of twin girls, which made them immune to HIV. The news drew a lot of outrage within and outside the scientific community and just yesterday news reports said China has kind of disowned the gene-editor saying he acted illegally and in pursuit of fame and fortune.

Gene-editing is a bigger disruption, I reckon.

Yes, China is becoming a lucrative market for such activities, it seems. In fact, editing human genes to correct ‘mistakes’ or ‘errors’ is a level of disruption in science that if you apply the logic of Bandersnatch critics is going against the fundamentals of science. While the puritans and conservatives say it is purely unnatural to tamper with life’s basic units such as the DNA, the apostles of gene-editing say if science can make us fix the blemishes of evolutions, let’s go for it.

But what’s a mistake to me won’t be a problem to you!

There you go. So the question is who’ll decide the pros and cons of it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If gene-edited babies can help the world be a better, safer and more equitable place for all, then we must have them. But the history of science doesn’t give us such assurances. To be frank, nobody wants a world of Frankensteins. So, I’d better go for Bandersnatch -kind of disruptions than creating a human with twisted genes.

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