Our oldest epic story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, is about a king who tolerated no limits. Frankenstein is a story about a young scientist who aspired to break through the ultimate scientific limit. Great minds have been warming us for some time about our ambivalence over limits.
The inventor and craftsman Daedalus was imprisoned on the Isle of Crete with his son Icarus. There was no escape by land or sea. But that left the air. What if a technology could be created mimicking something in the natural world that would allow their safe escape? Daedalus got to work and created two sets of wings, using candle wax to cover the frames with feathers and then instructed his son Icarus not to fly too low, lest the sea spray wet the feathers and weigh him down, or too high, since the heat of the sun could melt the wax and destroy the functionality of the wings. But Icarus got too excited mid flight and soared too high, ignoring caution, flew too close to the sun, and plummeted to his death.
We live in a world where a few fly too high and many fly too low, and disaster results. Let's take the ancient lesson, repeated in its own way in much great literature, and be careful with what we create and how we put it to use. Let's beware of the irrational exuberance that can make us oblivious to proper limits.
