- Hardcover: 346 pages
- Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; 1 edition (May 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679425632
- ISBN-13: 978-0679425632
- Product Dimensions: 24.4 x 16.8 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,109,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘A joyous celebration of the ways in which the world is a more complex place that we realise’
The Financial Times
‘By rights it should become a classic text about problem-solving’
Irish Times
Product Description
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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Examples of The Law of Unintended Consequences,
By A Customer
This review is from: Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (Paperback)
Tenner's book is a short history of things going wrong -- from the introduction of carp and mollusks into the American great lakes to industrial accidents. A very good review of how things can go wrong in our complex world; very well researched.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but terminally repetitave.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Why Things Bite Back (Hardcover)
This is a whole book built around a single premise, that once the simple problems have been solved the problems that remain are more difficult. This point is mode over and over again using medical, ecological, technical and social examples. In fact there are so many examples that after a while they all seem to merge into each other. You can only hammer a nail in so far, Mr Tenner. Personally I would have liked to have seen slightly fewer examples examined in more depth but you cartainly can't complain about the choice. Another problem with the book is that it is written with 20-20 hindsight. So many times whilst reading it I was tempted to say, "Well OK, given the limitations of knowledge and funds available to the protagonists in the examples, what would you have done instead?" Despite all the examples the book is a little short on alternatives and solutions and that, perhaps, is its main failing. Nevertheless, it is still a good book and one I would be happy to recommend. (c) Vince O'Sullivan.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unusually Well-Balanced Discussion of Technological Advances,
By A Customer
This review is from: Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (Paperback)
I can't recall reading another book on technology that was as well-balanced as this is. For this reason alone, Why Things Bite Back is good reading.But Tenner achieves much more than balance. He identifies useful categories, like revenge effects and reverse revenge effects. Within the former, Tenner identifies repeating effects (e.g., doing the same thing more often rather than gaining free time, as happened with time-saving devices like home clothes washers and dryers when we quit taking as many clothes to the laundry), recomplicating effects (e.g., being expected to remember more numbers as we go from rotary to push button telephone "dialing"), regenerating effects (e.g., Patriot missles breaking up Scuds into multiple, smaller projectiles), and recongesting effects (e.g., the transformation of apparently limitless electromagnetic bandwidth to congested, largely filled bandwidth). Whew! When reading this, I wondered how Tenner would later use these categories, which he introduced at the beginning of the book. Well, he does return to them and, in doing so, seems to be taking a first pass at crafting a useful nomenclature. My main problem with the book is that Tenner presses some of the arguments too hard, such as the perceived link between defeating TB and facilitating AIDS. I was disappointed to see this argument pop up again 260 pages after its first mention--this time in the book's conclusion. Tenner concludes that we can best manage revenge effects by retreating from intensity through three means: diversification, dematerialization, and finesse. Tenner provides numerous examples of each strategy, such as fostering diversity in plant species, substituting brains for stuff, and allowing a fever to play its role in fighting infection. Despite the presence of a few weak arguments, Why Things Bite Back is really remarkable and goes a long way toward preparing us to meet the challenge of continued, fast-paced technological progress.
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