Ray Bradbury The Flying Machine

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“The Flying Machine” by Ray Bradbury was a very intriguing reading. In this reading, the Emperor of China is informed of a man who has invented a flying machine. At first, the emperor seems to be impressed by the invention. However, the emperor determines to execute the inventor. As can be imagined, the inventor is very confused. He does not understand why the emperor has decided to kill him as he has just invented something very beautiful. The emperor then informs the inventor of his reasoning behind his decision. He says that the reason he must kill him is because he does not want another individual with evil intentions to manipulate his technology and destroy its beauty. He uses a specific example of an evil man using the flying machine …show more content…
In past readings, I have had a difficult time finding connections. However, in this reading I was able to find a distinct parallel. One of the biggest takeaways I had from this reading was the negative externalities that the Emperor believed the invention would have on his society. This was interesting, as in our society, it is not very common that the invention process is ceased due to negative externalities. In my business ethics course, I had a debate regarding autonomous vehicles. I found the analysis of both these inventions to be similar. In both cases, the invention’s externalities must be analyzed in order to determine whether the positives from that invention outweigh the negatives. In the case of the autonomous cars, I felt that the positives far outweighed the negatives. There was a statistic in which I learned that 90% of car crashes in the United States are caused by human error. Through autonomous vehicles, this variability would be taken out. The roads would be much safer if we could take human error out of the equation. In this specific case, the positive externalities far outweigh the negative externalities. The technology of autonomous vehicles may have drawbacks; however, the technology as a whole will greatly improve society as a whole. In this reading, the emperor determined that the flying machine had more negative externalities than positive. He believed that the flying machine would not advance
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