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Technology and its unanticipated consequences

1. Introduction

When the successful cloning of a lamb called Dolly was announced in February of this year by Scottish researchers, it set off a spate of anxious questions. Many of them concerned the ethics of cloning, but another set asked about the unanticipated consequences. If we go down the cloning road, where will it lead? The answer is that we don't know. All of our technological roads twist and turn, and we can never see around the bend or through the fog.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ubiquitous phenomenon of unanticipated consequences. We begin with a look at some definitions which shed light on the matter, and then consider the nature of change. This leads to a broadening of the definition of the word 'technology', and a look at what was one of our earliest examples of unanticipated consequences. We then address the crucial question of why we have such consequences. Some additional examples follow, and we then look at what society does in the face of unanticipated consequences. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the ethical implications of acting when we know that there can be unanticipated consequences to our actions.

2. Some Definitions

It is important here to distinguish between unanticipated and undesired consequences. The former are consequences which are not foreseen and dealt with in advance of their appearance. Undesired consequences are those which we are harmful, but which we are willing to accept, or accept the risk of occurring. Consequences may be:

Anticipated

• intended and desired
• not desired but common or probable
• not desired and improbable

Unanticipated

• desirable
• undesirable

As an example, consider the development of a nuclear power plant at an ocean site. The anticipated and intended goal or consequence is the production of electric power. The undesired but common and expected consequence is the heating of the ocean water near the plant. An undesired and improbable consequence would be a major explosion, and we would associate the term 'risk' with this outcome, but not with the heating of the water.

An unanticipated and desirable consequence might be the discovery of new operating procedures which would make nuclear power safer. An unforeseen and undesirable consequence might be the evolution of a new species of predator fish, in the warmed ocean water, which destroy existing desired species.

This paper concentrates on unanticipated consequences of our technologies. Anticipated negative consequences have been dealt with extensively in the literature on risk. See, for example, Margolis (1996), and Bernstein (1996). The latter emphasizes the role of mathematics in risk assessment.

Two brief points should be made before we proceed. The first is that change is always with us. Even without the intervention of human beings, nature changes constantly. Continents move, weather changes, species evolve, new worlds are born and old ones die. The second point is that all change seems to involve unanticipated consequences. Hence, the unanticipated is a part of life. There is no absolute security. Unanticipated consequences can be mitigated, largely through the gaining of additional information or knowledge, but not eliminated. That's the nature of our life, natural and human.

3. A Broader Definition of Technology

Although we focus here on the term 'technology' as it is usually taken, it is worth pointing out that human beings do much that has unanticipated consequences, in all areas of life, certainly including, for example: medicine, business, law, politics, religion, education, and many more. Because of the parallels among these fields it is useful to think of a broader definition of technology, such as "...that which can be done, excluding only those capabilities that occur naturally in living systems." (Benziger) This matter is dealt with in some detail by in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (Postman).

Seen in the light of this broader definition, writing is one of our first technologies. Postman recalls the story of Thamus and the god Theuth, from Plato's Phaedrus, as an example of unanticipated consequences. Theuth had invented many things, including: number, calculation, geometry, astronomy and writing. Theuth claimed that writing would improve both the memory and the wisdom of humans. Thamus thought otherwise.

Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this: you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.

It is true in all of our technologies, the discoverer of an art, or the designer of a new system is not usually the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. And yet, paradoxically, it is often the designer to whom we must go to ask for the likely outcomes of her work. This is a problem with which society must wrestle, and we shall discuss later how it does so.

4. Why Do We Have Unintended Consequences?

Dietrich Dorner has recently analyzed systems in a way that can help us see why they can be so difficult to understand, and hence why consequences are unanticipated. Dorner has identified four features of systems which make a full understanding of any real system impossible. These are:

• complexity
• dynamics
• intransparence
• ignorance and mistaken hypotheses

Complexity reflects the many different components which a real system has and the interconnections or interrelations among these components. Our system models necessarily neglect many of these components or features, and even more so their interrelations, but there is always a danger in doing so, because it is from such interrelations that the unanticipated may arise. Our economic system is an example of a highly complex system. Not only are there many players, but the players are also interrelated in many ways which are difficult to identify and define. If Player A sets this price, how will Player B respond, and what will Player C think and do when she observes the actions of A and B?

Many devices and systems exhibit dynamics, that is, the property of changing their state spontaneously, independent of control by a central agent in charge of the system. One of the most fascinating examples of our time is the Internet, an extraordinarily dynamic system, with no one in charge. There is no way to model the Internet system in a way which will predict its future and the future of the people and things which will be impacted by the Internet. Many of our complex technological systems have this property. Examples might include: a new freeway system, nuclear power, high definition television, genetic engineering. For example, a freeway system is dynamic because a large number of players initiate actions beyond any central control. Driver A slows down to observe an accident, Driver B responds in an unpredictable way, depending on his skills, state of mind, sobriety perhaps, and other factors. The system, though structured to some degree, is in many ways on its own.

Intransparence means that some of the elements of a system cannot be seen, but can nevertheless affect the operation of the system. More complex systems can have many contributors to intransparence. In the Internet, for example, the list would include almost all of the users at a particular time, equipment failures at user sites, local phenomena, such as weather, which affect use of the Internet at other locations. We need to understand that what you can't see might hurt you.

Finally, ignorance and mistaken hypotheses are always a possibility. Perhaps our model is simply wrong, faulty, misleading. This last problem is particularly interesting and important, because it is the one we can do something about. We can take steps to reduce our ignorance, to increase our understanding, as we shall discuss in Section 6. And in Section 7 we argue that we are obliged to do so.

Lets look next at some other perspectives on this problem. Peter Bernstein has addressed the matter from the viewpoint of probabilities and economics. He points out that economists have sometimes believed that deterministic forces drive our societies and their enterprises. More contemporary economists have seen less order. Bernstein puts it this way.

The optimism of the Victorians was snuffed out by the senseless destruction of human life on the battlefields (of the First World War), the uneasy peace that followed, and goblins let loose by the Russian Revolution. Never again would people accept Robert Browning's assurance that "God's in his heaven:/All's right with the world." Never again would economists insist that fluctuations in the economy were a theoretical impossibility. Never again would science appear so unreservedly benign, nor would religion and family institutions be so unthinkingly accepted in the western world. ...

Up to this point, the classical economists had defined economics as a riskless system that always produced optimal results....

Such convictions died hard, even in the face of the economic problems that emerged in the wake of the war. But a few voices were raised proclaiming that the world was no longer what once it had seemed. Writing in 1921, the University of Chicago economist Frank Knight uttered strange words for a man in his profession: 'There is much question as to how far the world is intelligible at all...It is only in the very special and crucial cases that anything like a mathematical study can be made.'

Edward Tenner takes still another perspective on the phenomenon of unanticipated and unintended consequences. He sees in some of our technologies a "revenge effect" in which our perverse technologies turn against us with consequences which exceed the good which had been planned.

Security is another window on revenge effects. Power door locks, now standard on most cars, increase the sense of safety. But they have helped triple or quadruple the number of drivers locked out over the last two decades - costing $400 million a year and exposing drivers to the very criminals the locks were supposed to defeat.

We shall return to this issue of perversity in Section 6 when we see how society attempts to deal with unintended consequences.

For Dorner on engineering, for Bernstein on economics, for Tenner's perverse technologies the message is the same. The world is not knowable and predictable. It's complexities are too great, its uncertainties beyond our understanding. Some unanticipated consequences are a necessary feature of all of our enterprises. But this does not mean that we should give up the effort to reduce uncertainty. We shall return to this in Section 7 on ethical implications.

In the next section we turn to some examples of such consequences. Then in Section 6 we consider how society responds to the problem of unanticipated consequences.

5. Some Examples

In this section we consider some anecdotes, some cases, of consequences which were not anticipated. We follow a historical path in this effort. We have already reached back to a time before the dawn of human history for a story of the invention of writing. Now we jump forward to the last two hundred years, touching on some of the effects of the Industrial Revolution, and moving on to questions which are being asked today about newly proposed technologies.

James Beniger's The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society, traces in some detail the evolution of technological development over the past two centuries, particularly in the United States. While Beniger stresses the role and need for control in technology, he does not pay a great deal of explicit attention to consequences. But, the implicit implications of the changes in speed brought on by the Industrial Revolution are clear.

VANE´S LESSON PLAN

LESSON PLAN

Universidad Católica de el Salvador

Teacher: Jacquelinne Vanessa Jimenez 

Audience: Teenagers

Topic: famous touristic places

Time 3 hours

INTERNET TOOLS USED: Facebook.com, Voxopop, Wordl, e-mail, youthink.com, my brainshark.com, you tube.com, google.com, blog, mind42.com.

WARM UP!

Directions: Go to the page of our subject on Facebook and ask students to give their impressions when they read the title “Famous Touristic Places.” The entire group must be set into a discussion.

Link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Instructional-Technology-Class-Unicaes/343610822329878

PRESENTATION

Pre-activity

Directions: have students think about some touristic places we have in our country and around the world.

What do you think this video will be about?

During activity

Directions: Play the video and ask students to write down the most important details.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvZUYtfPh0M

Post activity

Directions: Tell students to go to the blog and write an entry about some of the basic things they saw and listened in the video and they also have to answer the following questions. This part is important for the very controlled practice.

Questions:

-Which is the name of the offered city?

-What is the most beautiful place for you?

-Do the places have something in common?

-Would you like to visit any of them?

-Do you have family members living in those places?

VERY CONTROLLED ACTIVITIES

1-Quiz

Directions: After watching the video “New Orleans, Top Touristic Attractions (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvZUYtfPh0M), Take the quiz on the following link: http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_action=take&obj_id=208890&take_again=yes

Send the results to either of these e-mails:       vanesita_jj7@hotmail.com or    xarbamen@gmail.com

2-Matching activity

Directions: Go to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51umRiOZLe4 and based on the video about “Top 10 Travel Attractions, San Francisco (California),” give students the following matching activity. They have to develop the activity in Microsoft Word and send it to your e-mail account.

1-De Young Museum                                    a) offers excellent city views

2-In the Fisherman’s Wharf                           b) is an icon on San Francisco

3-The Golden Gate Park                               c) tourists can enjoy the architecture of local houses

4-The Alcatraz Island                                    d) is fascinated place to drive

5-Cable Cars                                                 e) is a place you will remember                  for a long time.

6-In the Architectural Heritage                      f) has beautiful landscapes

7-The Palace of Fine Arts                             g) It is inside the Golden Gate Park

8-The Coit Tower                                          h) you can see Sea Lions

9-The Lombard Street                                   i) used to have a prison

10-The Golden Gate Bridge                          j) was built in 1950

3- Wordl

Directions: Go to these links and rearrange the words to form logical sentences. The answers must be sent to the e-mails given before.

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4924326/There_is

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4924269/Top_attractions

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4924245/Residents

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4924231/Natchez

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4924047/San_francisco

SEMI-CONTROLLED ACTIVITIES

Extended sentences

1-Directions: The teacher uploads some words on the blog, which must be used by students to form complete and logical sentences.

1-    San Francisco has…

2-    Beaches are….

3-    In London…

4-    Some Touristic Places…

5-    My last vacation…

6-    People from….

7-    Going to Salvadorian restaurants

8-    New York is…

2- Reading and comprehension

Go to the following link and develop the activities:

http://topicsforteenagers.blogspot.com/2012/03/reading-and-comprehension.html

3- Travel culture:

Directions: go to your e-mail and there you will find a file called “Travel culture “. Develop the activities and send it back.

FREE ACTIVITIES

1-Brainshark

Travel Agency seller

Directions: Tell the students to think they are sellers of a travel agency, and they have to offer a touristic place to convince the audience that it is the best place to visit on vacations. Students have to create attractive slides with pictures of the place. Then, they must go to www.brainshark.com to record their voice to explain their presentations.

After doing that, students have to post the link on face book in the page of the subject.

2- Blog

Directions: Students have to go to the page of the subject on Facebook to watch someone’s power point presentation; then, they must go to their blog and comment about that presentation. They can include what they think about that touristic place and if they would like to visit that place. 

3- Mind 42

Directions: Ss must go to mind42 and participate on the mind map “Interesting places to visit.” They can comment the mind map and upload pictures and links to support their ideas.

Note: the teacher must send the invitation to the students’ e-mail, and they have to accept it to participate in this activity

4- Collage

Directions: Ss have to create a collage with the pictures of the places they would like to visit. They must add a short description of the collage and upload it on Facebook. Students can use whatever program to do this collage, example: Microsoft Word, Picasa 3, Microsoft Power Point, Publisher, etc.  

WRAP UP

Directions: send this crossword to each student in an e-mail and ask them to send it back solved.

Read the statement down and complete the crossword about useful vocabulary for tourists.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

ACROSS 3. A person who prepares food for eating. 4. A large tract of rural land kept in its natural state and usually reserved for the enjoyment and recreation of visitors. 6. One who travels for pleasure. 7. A place where meals are served to the public. 8. The motion of an object in or through a medium, especially through the earth's atmosphere or through space. 10. An establishment that provides lodging and usually meals and other services for travelers and other paying guests.

DOWN 1. One who serves at a table, as in a restaurant. 2. To sail or travel about, as for pleasure or reconnaissance. 5. A steep descent of water from a height; a cascade. 9. One who shows the way by leading, directing, or advising.

HOMEWORK

Directions: Go to this link on Voxopop http://www.voxopop.com/group/1d41a847-15cb-4e18-bc65-35b65a58bfbc and follow the talk group named Famous Touristic Places. Students must give their point of view about the studied topic, and about how they felt when recording their voices in the Power Point Presentation and how was the experience with the collage. They can say what places they would like to visit, etc. 

Instructional Technology quizzes

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG. WE WERE WAITING FOR YOU.

This time we are going to work with some useful Internet tools(quizzes on youthink.com, a video, a listening and a reading), which are intended to help students to get a better understanding of the topics and they also have a big chance to reinforce some skills in the target language. That is why, we have prepared 3 quizzes which contain 12 questions each, and they are designed for three different age levels: kids, teens and adults.
To continue, we will describe what each quiz is based on and then we will give you an idea on how to develop each of them.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE QUIZZES

These are multiple choice quizzes constituted by 12 statements with three possible options each. You have to go to the different links and then based on that, you have to choose the most appropriated answer. If you cannot open the links from here, you can Google them. At the end of each quiz you can check your score and see how accurate you were in your answers.

FIRST QUIZ

1)-This is an amazing quiz for kids and it is based on a very nice story narrated by a kid who wanted to eat a cake his mother had baked. At night, he makes the decision to go for it, and he tiptoes toward the kitchen fearing to wake up his parents just to discover out that his sister has eaten the cake.
2)-The first thing you must do is to watch the video and pay close attention to single details to answer the quiz in a correct way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL6xzw7kKN8

3)-After watching it, go to: http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_action=take&obj_id=208422&filter=my_qs&f_cat_id=-1&time_span=all

SECOND QUIZ

1)-This quiz is for teenagers and it is based on a reading about the smell of a book. It says that each smells remembers us something and that everything has a different smell. The author says that his favorite smell is of a book’s, and he also describes some books he has bought because his favorite hobby is reading.

2)-Go to the following link to read the article:
http://www.topics-mag.com/edition19/smells/book.htm

3)-After that, go to this link to carry out the quizz.
http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_action=take&obj_id=208153&filter=my_qs&f_cat_id=-1&time_span=all

THIRD QUIZ

1)-This quiz is for adults, and it is based on a listening about “the ideal woman.” We can listen to the opinions of two friends who have different points of views about the ideal woman. There is one man who seems to be possessive and perceives a woman as a slave, and the other who describes a woman with wonderful feelings and emotions.

2)-listen to the conversation on:
http://www.esl-lab.com/ideal/idealrd1.htm

3) Go to the following link to carry out the quiz:http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_action=take&obj_id=208414&filter=my_qs&f_cat_id=-1&time_span=all
It is important to say that some of the statements need your critical thinking because you cannot find the exactly answers in the audio.

CONCLUSION
This activity has been meaningful for us because most of the time students and teachers are accustomed to the traditional quizzes based on paper, but with these tools we can change the methodology, and it can benefit our pupils and the teacher. As you can see, by using these methodologies, we have access to most of students’ skills. We are sure that students will enjoy the experience of taking online quizzes and little by little they will get practice on the use of Internet tools.