This is a deadly serious issue. Mismanagement of the world's technology and resources by government/corporate entities is one of the great problems of the Age. It's not the little people, either individually or even in large numbers who pose the greatest risk of causing the most problems in the world. Billionaires or companies/nations with billions to spend to mess with things are the worst menace to Humanity.
Of all the thinkers of our age, the two I am aware of who had their fingers on the pulse most effectively were Dr. Michael Crichton and R. Buckminster Fuller.
Crichton's books and many of his lectures in the later part of his life, dealt with government licentiousness teaming up with corporate greed / ambition to wreak havoc. He had very pointed concerns about Genetic Engineering from that POV - not the technology, but ANY technology in the hands of an out-of-control corporatist aristocracy.
Crichton's novels State of Fear, Prey and Next specifically deal with this, although the theme is also present in many or most of his novels. The Jurassic Park character portrayed by Jeff Goldblum probably represents Crichton's own personal attitude toward the current state of the world's arrogance about technology and the (to his mind) insane notion that human beings can responsibly manage homeostatic systems with available knowledge and technology without risking catastrophe.
Recent research in DNA hase revealed that there are entire dimensions to the DNA molecule which suggest that regions heretofore thought inert are actually active and that we have simply been unaware of it. Nonetheless, we have made changes to DNA in many experiments, products and procedures achieving results but also functioning somewhat blind to the possibility that while we are working in two or three dimensions of functionality, DNA itself is functional in more than two.
In the most serious sense, with GE we may be playing two dimensional chess while the universe is playing three.
R Buckminster Fuller wrote in his autobiography/magnum opus "Critical Path" of the history of technology and of how corporatism and government licentiousness threaten to usurp technology and apply it to narrow, nefarious, oligarchic ends instead of to promote the greatest common good and the general welfare of Humanity.
Award-winning SF author William Gibson (Neromancer) writes an even darker view of the future than Fuller or Crichton and declares that humans have actually already created the lifeform which will supplant, replace and potentially destroy Humanity - corporations. Gibson points out that corporation already fulfill most or all of the prerequisites to be considered a sentient life form: maintains homeostasis in a chaotic environment, defends itself, reproduces, adapts, excretes, respires, evolves, consumes, has motility(moves) and where possible, establishes domination of territory (as a predator).
Gibson's view is extremely disturbing when viewed in the context of history of technology where each iteration of technological breakthroughs (from mechanical to chemical to electronic to sub-atomic to computerized) has led to more power being vested in corporations and governments. He foresees a not too distant time when multinational corporations unite in an unholy alliance with governments to form an effective Empire where the needs and priorities of the People are subsumed and largely trampled underfoot by a militant, amoral, all powerful global oligarchy which lays absolute claim tp and domination
