Reverse revenge effects
Is there a reverse revenge effect. For example "bad" technology such as nuclear weapons have actually had unforeseen positive effects? Haven't they actually kept the peace?
Well, perhaps with hindsight. It's almost miraculous given the
scope and intensity of the Cold War that it didn't become a hot
one. It's very probable nuclear weapons played a big part in
that. However if you look at how high the risk was at various
points, the resultant war would have been far, far worse than
any other. You are paying a very high price for that kind of stability.
We are now living in a pessimistic age, after the atomic optimism
of the fifties, the white heat of the technological revolution
has long since faded - are we now too cynical about technology?
I think people have reacted against the political exploitation of political goals. Whether it is sincere or not, presidents or prime ministers from Harold Wilson onwards http://www.theatlantic.com/atlantic/issues/96jun/blair/blair.htm have used technology to portray a really fantastic future. You can see why they do. The horizon of such technology being implemented is long enough for that kind of promise to be made - `the market will take care of it and the government contribution is not going to be very big'. You can paint a wonderful picture of the future and you don't have to take much responsibility for it. Those kind of promises are so easy to make and have lost so much credibility that perhaps the revenge effect is that if there is something that does genuinely have great promise but needs substantial investment, it doesn't get done.
So what is happening now. Do we just accept what we have?
Technology has reached a certain kind of maturity. There's something called Smeed's law, after R J Smeed one of the first traffic engineers in the world. He recorded the number of auto accidents per million miles driven against the density of automobiles. And it is a very interesting reverse revenge effect that as countries motorised more and more, driving actually became safer. The reason for this is that the early adopters had a cavalier attitude to driving. Something that was great fun to do as fast as possible without attention to the laws or pedestrians. But as the roads filled up, drivers became more and more disciplined as more and more rules appeared. Certainly the PC has followed that from the days of the homebrew computer club and the intense hobbyists. So much of that has been taken out of the realm of the adventurer and into the realm of commerce. A lot of the joy has gone.
But new safety devices bring their own problems: http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/BUSINESS/t000071806.html