Revenge of the Machine

It’s nearly 30-years since Tenner introduced us to the Revenge Effects and with the pace of technological change, we are not lacking for examples. The rapid adoption of low carbon technologies is providing many real-life examples. To me, the value of the Revenge Effects is the reminder that we do not operate in a vacuum; everything we do is within a system and, like Newton’s Third Law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There is more to Tenner’s idea that perhaps first meets eye. Below I explore the depth of his idea, providing some examples. Please do share your examples of where you see technologies Revenge Effects.

Revenge, a play of four parts

According to Tenner ‘Revenge effects are ways that technologies can solve one problem while creating additional worse problems, or create new types of problems, or shift the harm elsewhere altogether’. In short, technologies ‘bites back’. I love the image Tenner conjures of technologies ‘biting back’, like a vengeful snake. My world of safety and environmental risk management is full of examples.

Tenner helpfully provides four categories of the Revenge Effect:

1. Repeating effects refers to how more efficient process cause us to do the same thing more often, so no actual time is saved. This is the paradox of efficiency, we introduce technology to save time, but the promise is not realised. Tenner provides the example of improved domestic appliances which have raised our expectations for cleanliness, meaning we actually spend similar or often more time on housework. ?Some writers have argued repeating effect is evident in healthcare whereby medical procedures have reduced the time we spend in hospitals and hastened recoveries. But the number of procedures and medications a patient undergoes has risen significantly. I can also think of many examples of digital processes, both within work and our everyday lives, that promise time saving, but when considered in the round, take longer.
2. Recomplicating effects refers to how as technology advances, it often increases in complexity and this creates significant drawbacks. Just look to the TV remotes (plural) for an everyday example of this. I visited a hotel recently where I had to download the hotel app to access the room, operate the A/C, switch the room lights, close blinds and operate the TV. I am not known for my patience, but my cries for a manual light switch and a simple room controller fell on deaf ears when I interacted with the room chatbot. My chilling Room 101 nightmare was an example of the recomplicating effect, the forward march of technological complexity cost me 30 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. Recomplicating effect – there’s any app for that…
3. Regenerating effects occur when attempts to solve a problem end up creating additional risks. Safety, health and environmental are abundant with examples, and the interesting ones involve the conflict between two or three of them. The use of DDT and similar pesticides to eliminate insects has long been known to make them resistant or eliminate their natural predators. Similarly, while the development of antibiotics have been among the most important forces extending human lifespan in the last hundred years, their overuse has led to the creation of strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that are harder to treat. I’d argue Jens Rasmussen’s “Defence in Depth Fallacy” is an example of regenerating effect. Rasmussen argued more safety controls and defences can have the countereffect of making a safety system more complex, fragile and thus prone to catastrophic failure. Dare I mention the how work from home is often presented as lower risks and greater benefits, whereas research suggests decentralising work from the office to home working often leads to greater captivity to work rather than greater freedom, and working hours are typically longer.
4. Rearranging effects occur when costs are transferred elsewhere so risks shift and often worsen. The widespread use of asbestos as a fire retardant led to its use in ships, building and infrastructure (marketed as the magic mineral no less), but this created a deadly health risk which workers, families and communities paid for. Similarly, the use of lithium-ion batteries is reducing carbon emissions and air pollution, but leading to a sharp rise in domestic fires. The large-scale adoption of air conditioning units in workplaces and homes to address rising temperature is increasing the heat load in the adjacent properties and communities.

Unpacking the idea

Tenner offers a number of reasons for the Revenge Effects. He argues that isn’t technology itself at fault, but rather our tendency to “anchor it in laws, regulations, customs, and habits,” coupled with an inability to anticipate the unintended and unpredictable interactions between individual components acting as a system. The individual component of a vehicle, factory, computer, airplane or power grid are understood easily enough, but the parts combined form systems and subsystems that behave randomly. So this is actually a critique of technological determinism and the managerial faith in predictability and control. Now here’s an interesting alignment with James C Scott’s critique of ‘Authoritarian High Modernism’, Charles Perrow’s ‘Complex tightly-coupled’ and latterly John Downer’s notion of ‘Rational Accidents’. So this is really a critique of technical rationality and determinism, our belief that we can control everything through rational, logical and empiricism. In his seminal work ‘ Thinking Like a State’, James C. Scott puts it well:

“A recurrent theme of Western philosophy and science, including social science, has been the attempt to reformulate systems of knowledge in order to bracket uncertainty and thereby permit the kind of logical deductive rigour possessed by Euclidean geometry”

Tenner advises that if we learn from revenge effects we will not be led to renounce technology, but we will instead refine it: watching for unforeseen problems, managing what we know are limited strengths, applying no less but also no more than is really needed.

The Revenge Effect is not new. In the great DisasterCast podcast series, Drew Rae reveals how the introduction of the Safety Lamp in the early 1800’s, which was invented to create lighting without invoking a methane explosion, initially led to an increase in mine explosions and fatalities. Believing that the Safety Lamp had addressed the risk of pit explosions, owners reopened mines that been closed due to concerns on excessive danger. Over-confident in the technical solution, the mine owners also ?encouraged faster and less cautious mining, but the newly adopted Safety Lamps were not fail safe and could, if damaged spark an explosion. It is noted that the Felling Colliery explosion (1812, 92 fatalities) and the St Hilda Collery disaster (1839, 51 fatalities) both long after the introduction of the Safety Lamp. Hence, the revenge effect of the Safety Lamps led to over-confidence in the technology and increased disasters until the Safety Lamp was improved. Refer to the link to the podcast below.

The Last Word

My overall impression of Tenner’s idea is that as we complicate the systems which govern our lives, revenge effects multiply. This is not some Luddite anti-technology argument - new technologies certainly do improve the quality of our lives. But we need to recognise that more technology often increases complexity and this demands more, not less human work and vigilance. More technology can also make a system more fragile. Complex technologies that interact with our human system always produce revenge effects. Like a game of ‘Whac-a-Mole’ for every acute problem solved, a chronic problem quickly replaces it. When operating in a complex sociotechnical system, we can only foresee and predict so far.

So what is your experience?

• Where have you see example of the revenge effects of technology?
• Perhaps you introduced a game changing process, chemical or technology that had huge promise, only to discover it had introduced unintended consequences elsewhere within the system.
• Maybe you have launched new environmental technology to reduce carbon only find out that the benefits were offset by significant unforeseen issues or hazards?

I’m always interested to hear examples, so please share what you’ve experienced technologies ‘biting back’.

References and further reading

?? Edward Tenner, ‘Why Things Bite Back: Technology & the Revenge of Unintended Consequences’ New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996

?? DisasterCast Safety Podcast. Episode 3 – Risk Acceptance and Coal Mine Disasters. https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/disastercast/episode-3-risk-acceptance-p_0WZzNtna2/

?? A TedTalk with Edward Tenner on his ideas. https://www.ted.com/talks/edward_tenner_unintended_consequences?subtitle=en