Joe: You know that feeling of moral certainty? That deep-down conviction you know right from wrong? Lewis: Oh, I live there. That’s my home address. 123 Righteous Path. Joe: Well, what if I told you that your moral compass has an expiration date, and technology is the one setting the clock? Lewis: Okay, that's a bold start. Are you saying my sense of justice is going to curdle like old milk? That one day I'll wake up and think, "You know, maybe stealing office supplies is a virtue"? Joe: Not quite, but maybe closer than you think. This is the explosive idea at the heart of a book that’s been rattling my brain for weeks: RIGHT/WRONG: How Technology Transforms Our Ethics by Juan Enriquez. Lewis: Right/Wrong. That’s a title that doesn’t mess around. Joe: And this isn't some armchair philosopher. Enriquez is a biotech venture capitalist and was the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project. He's literally been in the rooms where the future of human life is being designed. The book has a bit of a mixed reception, not because it's bad, but because it's so provocative. It doesn't give you answers; it just blows up your certainties. Lewis: I like that. It’s less of a lecture and more of a… controlled demolition of my beliefs. So where does he start this demolition? Joe: He kicks off with one of the most fundamental areas technology has completely upended: family. And how the very definition of having a child has been rewritten in a single generation.

Lewis: Right. The whole "birds and the bees" talk. I feel like that's gotten a lot more complicated. Joe: Complicated is an understatement. Enriquez uses this brilliant thought experiment. Imagine you build a time machine, and you bring your four grandparents, as they were in their twenties, to your living room today. Lewis: Okay, first, they’d be horrified by the price of avocados. But go on. Joe: You sit them down, pour them a drink, and you try to explain modern reproduction. You start with birth control. You explain that for most people today, sex is almost entirely disconnected from making babies. For your grandmother, who likely saw motherhood as her primary destiny, that alone is a revolution. The book cites these wild stats—in 1937, only about 60% of Americans thought birth control was okay. By 2015, it’s nearly 90%. Lewis: That’s a massive shift. It’s moving from a moral debate to just… a fact of life. Like traffic. Joe: Exactly. But then you keep going. You tell them about IVF. You explain that a doctor can take an egg from a woman and sperm from a man, mix them in a glass dish, and create an embryo. Your grandparents would probably stare at you, thinking you’re describing some kind of immaculate conception. Lewis: Witchcraft! They’d be looking for the pitchforks. Joe: And you’re just getting warmed up! Then you explain frozen embryos. You say, "We can create that baby, freeze it for ten years, and then implant it in a different woman—a surrogate mother—who will carry and give birth to it." Lewis: My brain just did a somersault. So you're telling me parenthood has become a time-travel paradox? A child could technically be born before their older sibling is even conceived. Joe: Precisely! Technology has decoupled sex from reproduction, conception from physical contact, and parenthood from time itself. Enriquez tells this amazing little story about Elizabeth Carr, the first IVF baby born in the U.S. In her fifth-grade sex-ed class, the teacher is explaining the traditional way babies are made. And little Elizabeth raises her hand and says, "That's not how I was made." Lewis: Wow. That kid was living in the future. It makes you realize, is this why these conversations feel so fraught? We're literally arguing about things that were pure science fiction a generation ago. Our ethical software hasn't had time to update. Joe: That’s the core of it. The book quotes James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, who said in 1974 about these technologies, "All hell will break loose, politically and morally." And for a while, it did. But now? IVF is a standard medical procedure. What was once a moral horror is now a celebrated solution for millions. Lewis: So the technology came first, and our ethics just had to… catch up and get comfortable with it. It wasn't a philosopher who changed our minds, it was an engineer with a petri dish. Joe: That's the pattern Enriquez points to again and again. And it’s not just about our bodies. It's about the entire world around us.

Lewis: Okay, so technology rewrites the rules for our bodies. But what about the world around us? It feels like we're stumbling into the future blindfolded. Joe: That's exactly Enriquez's next point. He calls it 'ethical quicksand,' where the ground of what’s right and wrong is shifting under our feet so fast we can’t find solid footing. And the perfect example starts with a very, very expensive hamburger. Lewis: I’m listening. I love expensive hamburgers. Joe: In 2013, a Dutch scientist publicly ate the world’s first lab-grown burger. It was made from cow stem cells, grown in a lab, no animal killed. The cost? A cool $380,000. Lewis: For one burger?! I hope it came with fries and a drink. That is absurd. Joe: It was! Everyone laughed. It was a novelty, a weird science experiment. But here’s where the ethical quicksand starts. Just two years later, the price had dropped to about $30 a pound. Today, companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are in every major supermarket. Burger King sells a plant-based Whopper. The technology is moving at an exponential pace. Lewis: Okay, intellectually I get it. It’s better for the planet, no animal suffering. But my gut is screaming 'Franken-meat!' How do we get past that visceral 'yuck' factor? Joe: Enriquez’s argument is that technology makes being ethical easier. Right now, choosing not to eat meat requires a sacrifice for many people. But what happens when the lab-grown version is cheaper, safer, and tastes identical to the real thing? Suddenly, the ethical choice is also the easy, convenient choice. Lewis: And at that point, future generations will look back at us and say, "You used to do what to animals? You raised them in cages and slaughtered them by the billion, just for a sandwich? You monsters!" Joe: Exactly! That’s the judgment of history. Our grandkids might see our factory farms with the same horror we reserve for, say, Roman gladiator games. Enriquez tells this incredible story about Jambo, a silverback gorilla in a zoo. A little boy fell into the enclosure, and everyone panicked. But Jambo didn't attack. He gently stood over the unconscious boy, stroking his back and protecting him from the other gorillas. Lewis: That’s amazing. It completely shatters the 'King Kong' monster stereotype. Joe: It does. It shows us that animals are capable of empathy, of what we would call moral action. And when you combine that understanding with a technology that offers a viable alternative, the ethical ground shifts. Continuing the old way becomes indefensible. Lewis: But this is where it gets scary, right? Because this same power can be used in other ways. It’s not just about growing burgers. Joe: You’ve hit on the darkest part of the quicksand: gene drives. This is a technology that allows us to edit the genes of a species and ensure that edit is passed down to all future offspring, effectively allowing us to drive a species to extinction on purpose. Lewis: Hold on. Deliberate, targeted extinction? That sounds like playing God with a vengeance. Joe: The initial idea was to wipe out malaria by making the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the carrier, extinct. A noble goal, right? But the scientist who pioneered much of this work, Kevin Esvelt, is now one of its most vocal critics. He famously said, "I'm sure we'll be able to do it before people can agree if we should." Lewis: That quote gives me chills. That’s the whole book in one sentence. Our technical ability is sprinting ahead, while our ethical wisdom is crawling, trying to read the instruction manual. Joe: And that gap between 'can' and 'should' is where the most dangerous mistakes are made. That quote is the perfect bridge to our final, and maybe most personally terrifying, idea. Because while we're debating these huge issues, our daily lives are creating a record that never, ever goes away.

Lewis: Ah, the internet. My personal archive of bad jokes and questionable fashion choices from 2009. Joe: It’s so much more than that. Enriquez calls it our "electronic tattoo." It’s permanent, it’s searchable, and it will outlive you. And unlike a real tattoo, you can’t cover it up with a long-sleeved shirt. He tells this devastating story about a young man named Josh Jarboe. Lewis: I’m not familiar with him. Joe: He was a five-star football recruit, an incredible talent from a rough background in Atlanta. He had a real shot at the NFL. But the summer before he started college at Oklahoma, he recorded a rap video with some friends. It was what you’d expect from a teenager trying to act tough—posturing about guns, violence, and sex. He posted it online. Lewis: Oh no. I can see where this is going. Joe: Every time he got into the slightest bit of trouble—a minor scuffle, a disagreement with a coach—that video would resurface. Opposing fans would blast it. Bloggers would write about it. It became this ghost that haunted him. It didn't matter that he was growing up, maturing, trying to move past it. The video was his electronic tattoo, and it defined him. He was eventually kicked off the team. His NFL dreams evaporated. Lewis: That's brutal. It's like having your dumbest teenage moment follow you around forever, weaponized. There's no room for growth, no statute of limitations on youthful stupidity. There’s no forgiveness. Joe: There’s no forgiveness because the evidence is permanent. And it’s not just our mistakes. It’s everything. The book points to research showing how our digital footprints reveal our deepest selves. One study found that with just 70 Facebook 'likes,' an algorithm can know you better than a friend. With 150 likes, it knows you better than your parents. And with 300 likes… it knows you better than your own spouse. Lewis: That is deeply unsettling. So all those cat videos I liked are painting a complex psychological portrait of me for some server in Silicon Valley? Joe: A portrait that will be judged by people in the future who have a completely different ethical framework. Think about it. We judge historical figures for owning slaves or for their views on women, but they lived in a world where those views were the norm, reinforced by every institution around them. Enriquez uses the example of Charleston in the 1800s. Your parents, your preacher, your teachers—everyone told you slavery was right and necessary. How do you get 'woke,' as he puts it, when your entire world is teaching you the wrong thing? Lewis: That’s a really powerful point. It’s easy to feel morally superior from our vantage point in the 21st century. Joe: But future generations will have our complete, unvarnished digital record. Every ignorant comment, every problematic 'like,' every unthinking purchase. They will see it all, and they will judge us by their standards, which will be as alien to us as ours are to our great-grandparents.

Lewis: So after all this... are we doomed? Are we just passengers on a runaway tech train with no moral brakes? It feels a bit hopeless. Joe: It’s funny, the book is full of these terrifying scenarios, but Enriquez’s final message isn't one of doom. It's a call for humility. He’s not saying we need to have all the answers. In fact, he’s saying the opposite. The danger lies in being too certain. Lewis: The danger is in thinking our moral compass is fixed and perfect. Joe: Exactly. The most profound takeaway for me was this idea, which he repeats in various ways: "We still act in ways that future generations will consider profoundly unethical." We are the ancestors now. We are the ones who will be judged for our factory farms, our disposable plastics, our online mobs. Lewis: So the goal isn't to achieve some perfect, final state of 'Right.' The goal is to stay in the conversation, to keep questioning, to keep debating. Joe: Yes! To approach these issues with modesty, generosity, and compassion. To listen to people we disagree with, because they might be seeing a part of the future that we’re blind to. The book is a plea to re-engage with ethics, not as a set of dusty rules, but as a dynamic, thrilling, and sometimes terrifying process of discovery. Lewis: I like that. It’s less about being right, and more about being willing to learn. To be open to the possibility that we might be wrong. Joe: And that leads to the final, big question the book leaves you with. I think it's a great one for everyone listening to ponder. Lewis: Lay it on me. Joe: What is one thing we do today, completely normally, that our grandkids will be absolutely horrified by? Lewis: Wow. That’s a heavy one. Driving our own gasoline cars? Eating meat? Our obsession with social media? The list could be endless. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Drop us a line on our socials and tell us what you think. What's your candidate for future ethical horror? Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.