- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Fourth Estate; New Ed edition (3 April 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1857025946
- ISBN-13: 978-1857025941
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 3.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 601,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
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
How scientific and technological advances solve acute problems but offer chronic problems in their stead. Tenner’s fascinating book – in the same vein as Charles Handy’s The Age of Unreason – pinpoints the problems and offers a new paradigm for controlling them.
Edward Tenner contends that with every great advance in science and technology, there is a corresponding revenge effect: transportation which hinders mobility, exercise which diminishes fitness, pest control that spread pests and communication that limits information. This book explains why so many people are dissatisfied and apprehensive despite the undeniable improvements which technology has brought them. The irony lies in the very success of technology which has tended to replace the acute problems that it helps to solve with chronic ones which cannot be eradicated, but only managed: yesterday’s asbestos curtain which represented protection from acute hazard now implies long-term, chronic hazard. WHY THINGS BITE BACK is carefully and extensively documented: it brings together common themes from widely differing disciplines: traffic engineering, epidemiology, ecology, social pyschology and organisational behaviour. It draws on scientific articles as well as business, computer and sports magazines. The resulting overview offers a template for problem solving across the board – be it in business management , household matters, or indeed how to cope with the general stress of living in the technological world.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
One of industrial and postindustrial humanity's parennial nightmares is the machine that passes from stubbornness to rebellion. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
One of industrial and postindustrial humanity's parennial nightmares is the machine that passes from stubbornness to rebellion. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format: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.
Format: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.
Format: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.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not 'Why Things Bite Back' but "How things Bite Back'
This is an interesting catalog of the how of technological unintended consequences but is lacking in the why. Read more
Published on 4 Aug 1998
Thoroughly iconoclastic in the the age of progress...
The author simply points out that progress is fraught with irony; however, mass consumer capitalism requires an uninformed, compulsive, infantile consumer and planned obsolescent... Read more
Published on 21 July 1997
Technology is not your friend
Why is it that any step forward seems to be followed by three steps back ?
This guy knows, he also knows why:
* Bigger roads lead to more traffic jams... Read more
This guy knows, he also knows why:
* Bigger roads lead to more traffic jams... Read more
Published on 28 Jun 1997
A great read for cynics
After reading this book, it's hard not to see unintended consequences everywhere. A great insight into the fallability of man, and the need for an in-depth understanding of... Read more
Published on 21 Jan 1997
Kudos and two thumbs up ( this from a college senior )
Edward Tenner, author of Why things bite back: Technology
and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, weaves an
interesting set of stories involving technology to... Read more
and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, weaves an
interesting set of stories involving technology to... Read more
Published on 14 Dec 1996
Interesting book, but it fell short of the goal
While Tenner presents a large number of cases that fall under the umbrella of his subject, he does not spend enough time examining lessons; what, beyond the obvious, was learned... Read more
Published on 4 Nov 1996
Sheesh! Of course the world is screwed up, but...
Why not ignore the parts of the world that you dislike and enjoy the parts that are
agreeable? There are enough people who complain, dare to be different. Read more
agreeable? There are enough people who complain, dare to be different. Read more
Published on 15 Aug 1996
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
