Edward Tenner, "Another Look Back, and a Look Ahead"

Edward Tenner has been called a "philosopher of everyday technology." His principal concern is the way that human beings interact with the products of technological innovation. In exploring these interactions, Tenner takes a very expansive view, and his thinking brings together subjects as diverse as agriculture, antibiotics, automobiles, chairs, shoes, football helmets, and computer software. Tenner's studies of technological development have led him to conclude that innovation often produces-at least in the short term-unintended negative consequences. These negative consequences, which Tenner calls technology's "revenge effects," sometimes actually make life less safe, convenient, and efficient than before the inventions came into being. As he puts it, "A small change to solve a minor problem may create a larger one." Moreover, he notes that the risk of technology's revenge effects has only been intensified by the ubiquity of computer software in modern life.  

Revenge effects unfold around us every day-in the form of traffic jams, for example, and as online spam. But Tenner is intrigued and inspired by the way that people have responded with creativity to these problems. Revenge effects are unintended-that much is true-but our efforts to improve the quality of life need not be self-defeating. As Tenner puts it, "human culture, not some inherent will of the machine, has created most revenge effects," and for this reason, he argues that we must not lose sight of our capacity to change and adapt. As the pace of innovation accelerates, Tenner considers one question to be especially important for any reflection on the best course for the future: "How can we break out of ruts and change our thinking?"  

Tenner's educational and professional background is eclectic. In addition to Why Things Bite Back (1996), Tenner is also the author of Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity (2003). He is currently a writer, speaker, and technology consultant, and was formerly employed as the science editor at Princeton University Press. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and has been affiliated with Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History.  

Tenner, Edward. "Another Look Back, and a Look Ahead." Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences. New York: Knopf, 1996. 254-277.
Biographical information and digital image drawn from Edward Tenner's home page.
Quotes drawn from the Princeton University Web site, the NPR interview with Tenner, and from Why Things Bite Back.

Link to Explore:

http://www.princetoninfo.com/200405/40512c03.html: An article by Edward Tenner on an unexpected boom in book publishing following the rise of computing.

Question for Learning:

• In this article, Edward Tenner discusses the unintended direction taken by the book publishing industry in recent years. While expected by many to languish, it has instead flourished as computers have made publishing cheaper and more accessible to greater numbers of people. How does Tenner's treatment of books compare to his overview of disasters and the "revenge effect"? Is the revenge effect always negative? How does Tenner establish a basis for further reflection without taking a specifically positive or negative stance on an issue?

For additional connecting suggestions, please go to assignments and more assignments.

Question for Connecting:

• Tenner assures us, in spite of all the complications, that progress "comes in by the back door." In making this claim he seems to believe that a self-correcting process will usually operate, with "intensity" followed by "disaster," which produces "precaution" and finally "vigilance." Is this argument confirmed, extended, complicated, or refuted by Relman and Angell's account of the pharmaceutical industry's procedures for developing and marketing new drugs? Does the need for regulation and monitoring show that financial considerations can derail technology's usual self-correcting tendencies? Are financial considerations sometimes at odds with the development of scientific knowledge in general?

Explore some more:

Search for other links using Google: