The Revenge of Technology - Murphy's Law and Things Not Going as Planned

Author: Edward Turner
Translator: Xu Junpei et al.
Editor-in-Chief: Pan Tao et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-09-01
Features: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." This is the Murphy's Law. From the safer padding in American football compared to rugby to the "low-tar" cigarettes that force smokers to inhale more, from the creation of new antibiotic-resistant bacteria to the computer software that requires faster information processing and more support staff—technological innovations have unintended and terrifying consequences. So, how do we survive in this world where "plans are no match for change"? If computers truly eliminate paperwork, why are office trash cans always full? Why are the queues in front of ATM machines often longer than those at teller windows? Anyone who has pondered these questions will find answers in this book. The author delves into the frustrating "revenge effects" of technologies worth praising with insightful, thought-provoking, and engaging exploration. From the safer padding in American football to the "low-tar" cigarettes that force smokers to inhale more, from the creation of new antibiotic-resistant bacteria to the computer software that requires faster information processing and more support staff, Edward Turner nearly provides everything about the unintended consequences of technological innovations and teaches people how to survive in this "world where plans are no match for change." Von Neumann predicted in 1955 that energy would become so cheap by 1980 that it would be immeasurable; Turner believes that even without considering human behavior and other factors, the future state of complex systems is extremely difficult to predict.
Excerpt: The brutal speed and efficiency brought by the doubling of computing power every 18 months by microcomputers and networks form a trap. The more powerful the system, the more time people spend maintaining it, developing software, fixing bugs and conflicts, learning new versions, and constantly operating it. Additionally, a certain technology may bring repetitive effects and reconfiguration effects during its operation. Early computer historians excessively praised their new quantitative analysis capabilities—until they realized that before the machine could process and analyze data in minutes, they might spend months or even years manually inputting the data. One attitude toward computers and productivity emphasizes the many benefits of computational methods, making conventional measurement seem obsolete. If anything should change, it should be the methods of economists, not the demands of the computer industry. A more radical argument is that the purpose of computers is to master and apply them to achieve happiness when things go as desired. According to this view, Minesweeper games on employee screens should not bother bosses—perhaps there is something to be learned from them. There are as many means as there are purposes of computerization. Every computer user must have experienced the joy of smooth work—such as admiring the beautiful text displayed by a new program or printer—when discussing profits and losses seems crude. However, this attitude overlooks many significant frustrations. Some programmers are repetitive key-tappers. If everyone's experience is supreme, what about the countless people who still prefer to work manually? For techno-enthusiasts and techno-skeptics, the best, perhaps the only way to avoid the revenge effects of computation is to protect technologies and resources unrelated to computers. We can learn to quickly identify computational methods to avoid placing decimal points incorrectly. We can work face-to-face, communicate with colleagues and outsiders over the phone to avoid misunderstandings caused by over-reliance on email. The problems of computers, like many other revenge effects, remind people in some way of the value of other things. In the computer industry, calligraphy and handwritten letters, which had been neglected for many years, began to revive.
Failures, accidents, and breakdowns have a positive side: they are a way for machines to convey messages to us, reminding us to broaden our focus and not to risk everything on electronic baskets.