Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences - Hardcover

Tenner, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679425632 ISBN 13: 9780679425632

Publisher: Knopf, 1996

Synopsis

In this fascinating book, historian of science Edward Tenner takes a fine-toothed comb to several realms of technological intervention and discovers a resolute pattern of "revenge effects, "paradoxical, ironic consequences of the step s we take supposedly to improve our lives. Whether proliferating technology is fated to lead us to utopia, we can be certain that it has plenty of tricks up its sleeve.

About this title

About the Author

Edward Tenner, former executive editor for physical science and history at Princeton University Press, holds a visiting research appointment in the Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University. He received the A.B. from Princeton and the Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago and has held visiting research positions at Rutgers University and the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1991-92 he was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow and in 1995-96 is a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

From the Inside Flap

inating book, historian of science Edward Tenner takes a fine-toothed comb to several realms of technological intervention and discovers a resolute pattern of "revenge effects, "paradoxical, ironic consequences of the step s we take supposedly to improve our lives. Whether proliferating technology is fated to lead us to utopia, we can be certain that it has plenty of tricks up its sleeve.

Reviews

Even when used to better the world, technology fosters unforeseen, often unpleasant consequences that Tenner calls "revenge effects." For example, air-conditioned subways raise platform temperatures by as much as 10 degrees F; some computer users get painful, wrist-numbing carpal tunnel syndrome; flood control systems encourage settlement of flood-prone areas, inviting disaster; 6% of all hospital patients become infected with microbes they encounter during their stay. In a thought-provoking study, Tenner, a historian of science and visiting researcher at Princeton, looks at revenge effects that pop up in medicine, sports, the computerized office and the environment. Oil spills, erosion of beaches, back injuries, athletes' illegal use of steroids and mass extermination of bird species on the world's islands by ship-hopping rats mark this saga of bewildering, often frustrating change. Tenner's cautionary conclusion: revenge effects demand ingenuity and brainpower as technology continues to replace life-threatening problems with slower-acting, more persistent ones.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

What do football helmets and laser printers have in common? According to Tenner, they exemplify a new sort of technological backlash that turns the promise of progress on its head. Tenner, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, argues that progress in numerous fields of endeavor has been undercut by unanticipated ``revenge effects,'' which he describes as ``ironic unintended consequences'' of human ingenuity. Examples are myriad: antibiotics that promise the cure of age-old disease but end up breeding resistant microorganisms; imported wildlife that competes too successfully with native species; computer printers that create better-looking documents--and force everyone to desktop-publish memos that would convey the same information if handwritten. The examples are organized under several headings, from medicine and environmental disasters to pests (both animal and vegetable), computerization, and sports (which, interestingly enough, offers some of the best evidence of the thesis). The football helmet, designed to reduce injuries, actually encourages a more violent style of play, creating a new and more serious kind of injury. While Tenner claims to be neither pro- nor anti-technology, he often seems to press his thesis beyond useful limits, as in his observation that those who dwell near wooded areas must now be on guard against tick bites; this is neither a new phenomenon nor an effect of technology. He has clearly done an impressive amount of research, but his footnotes (which attempt to cover whole paragraphs in one sweep) do not let the reader easily follow his research; often an interesting and provocative quote will go unattributed. And a convoluted style often forces a reader to reread an argument that could have been more simply stated. Tenner's subject is undoubtedly interesting, and his examples will strike close to home for many readers; the book would be even better if he had not tried to inflate his useful observations into universal truths. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Tenner, a bright and polymath writer, investigates the unforeseen risks arising from the ever-intensifying complexity of technology. Take the most familiar of the four arenas he describes, the computerized office. In addition to complaints about backs, wrists, and eyeballs from imposing sedentary immobility, the computer creates the need to hire experts to fix crashes and glitches, which nullifies its vaunted asset of low-cost efficiency. Such unforeseen risks, or "revenge effects," are congenital to Tenner's three other arenas: medicine, sports, and environmental control of pests and natural disasters. Revenge effects in high-performance sports gear include making pursuits like football or mountaineering more dangerous or more boring. The flip side of inevitable vengeance, Tenner observes, is vigilance against the inevitable problems created by technological solutions, an unending battle he relates in an eclectic, impish, educating, and entertaining manner. A must for technology collections. Gilbert Taylor

Believers in Murphy's Law-"if something can go wrong, it will"-might think this book proves it. Historian of science Tenner, who holds a visiting research appointment at Princeton University's Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences, describes the "revenge effect," an adverse consequence occurring when "new structures, devices, and organisms react with real people in real situations in ways we could not foresee." There are innumerable examples, e.g., sophisticated medical procedures save lives but are expensive and leave patients vulnerable to other unpleasant complications, technologies to improve agricultural yield inadvertently lead to erosion, and office computerization has fostered a new epidemic of carpal tunnel syndrome. Tenner chronicles dozens of such cases, which are seen as almost inevitable owing to the complexity of many systems. With hindsight, some of his examples seem obvious-for example, traffic jams resulted from the mass production of automobiles-and Tenner's point is clear by the third chapter. Still, his conclusion that we must recognize revenge effects and act earlier to avert them is worth heeding. For general science collections.
Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From easily reversible eyestrain to crippling back, hand, and wrist pain, the physical problems of computing have important things in common. They are incremental. They develop slowly, often without a noticeable onset. There can be a sudden crisis of disabling pain, the result of conditions that have persisted for weeks or months. These are only indirectly measurable. X-rays and other imaging can show anomalies consistent with pain, but men and women with similar physical images may not have similar feelings.

Above all, these conditions are shaped socially. Political conservatives usually insist on the existence of an objective reality and deny that scientific and even technological knowledge is socially constructed. But partly because there is no "dolorometer," no recognized test for pain -- only at best devices that may reveal suspiciously inconsistent responses -- conservatives and especially neoconservatives deplore the economic cost of computer-related claims and see neurosis at work, if not fraud. Liberals, who otherwise perceive the self-interest of medical providers in "new" syndromes and diagnoses, consider computer-related illness to be objectively real. Both sides would agree that injury rates tend to be higher where work is more stressful. Organizations using similar hardware and software have had such different experience with injuries that social processes must be responsible for part of the difference. But nobody understands yet what the processes may be and how they operate.

In the outbreak of reported cumulative trauma disorders in Australia in the 1980s -- "the largest, most costly and most prolonged industrial epidemic in world history," according to one medical critic there -- there was agreement that medical attitudes were part of the problem and actually helped make it worse. But who was creating the unintended consequences? Was it the office workers who were reporting it, or their labor and feminist allies who helped promote oversensitivity to minor symptoms and even encourage outright malingering? (Australian trade unions are among the world's most socially and politically active, and workers' compensation laws reflect labor's political influence.) Or were sympathetic physicians helping "the powerless and dependent, and those who cannot otherwise express their righteous rage at their supervisors, employers and spouses," to use their "exquisitely symbolic pain and incapacity" to communicate distress, as one Australian doctor has suggested? Or
were skeptical physicians helping to create chronic symptoms by refusing to take early reports seriously and putting the burden of proof on patients, as other analysts have argued? Either way, the epidemic was in part an unintentional consequence of medicalizing what the Australians called (following Commonwealth practice) repetitive strain injury.

Not paying attention leads to injuries. But focusing on the physical problems of computing or anything else might have amplified the symptoms. Are sufferers hard workers who have driven themselves too far, coming forward reluctantly only when the pain is unendurable? Or are they consciously or unconsciously trying to escape from responsibility by medicalizing their problems? Questions that begin with seatpans and backrests, forward and backward tilts, microswitch clicks and wrist supports turn out to have answers that are psychological, organizational, and even political. The question is whether the ethical burden is on employers to control stress even at the expense of profits and "competitiveness," or on workers (whether data tabulators or editorial writers) to stiffen their upper lips as well as their lower backs.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679425632
• ISBN 13: 9780679425632
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 346