Why things bite back: technology and the revenge effect / Edward Tenner

Tenner, Edward

ISBN 10: 1857024761 / ISBN 13: 9781857024760

Published by London: Fourth Estate, 1996

About this Item

Near fine cloth copy in a good if somewhat edge-nicked and dust-dulled dust-wrapper. Pages tanned as with age. Remains well-preserved overall. Physical description: xiii, 346 pages; 20 cm. Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: Technology Sociological aspects. Technology Social aspects. Technology Economic aspects. Technological innovations Revenge effect. Science Social aspects. Society Effects of Technology. Genre: Technology. 1 Kg.

Seller Inventory # 325938

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Why things bite back: technology and the revenge effect / Edward Tenner
• Publisher: London: Fourth Estate
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1857024761
• ISBN 13: 9781857024760
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Weight: 1 kilogram

About this title

Synopsis

If it can go wrong, it will--thus Murphy's Law. Science journalist Edward Tenner looks more closely at this eternal verity, named after a U.S. Air Force captain who, during a test of rocket-sled deceleration, noticed that critical gauges had been improperly set and concluded, "If there's more than one way to do a job and one of those ways will end in disaster, then somebody will do it that way." Tenner concurs, and he gives us myriad case studies of how technological fixes often create bigger problems than the ones they were meant to solve in the first place. The indiscriminate use of antibiotics, by way of example, has yielded hardier strains of bacteria and viruses that do not respond to pharmaceutical treatment; the wide-scale use of air conditioning in cities has raised the outdoor temperature in some places by as much as 10 degrees, adding stress to already-taxed cooling systems; the modern reliance on medical intervention to deal with simple illnesses, to say nothing of the rapidly growing number of elective surgeries, means that even a low percentage of error (one patient in twenty-five, by a recent estimate) can affect increasingly large numbers of people. Tenner examines what he deems the "unintended consequences" of technological innovation, drawing examples from everyday objects and situations. Although he recounts disaster after painful disaster, his book makes for curiously entertaining, if sometimes scary, reading. --Gregory McNamee