Networker: Accidental good

Writing more than a century ago, Frederick Engels commented that
the outcome of scientific and technological development always has unexpected
consequences. He gave the example of the discovery of alcoholic distillation
and its use hundreds of years later as one of the weapons of colonial destruction
of traditional societies in the Americas.

Engels, who is best known for co-authoring the Communist Manifesto
with Karl Marx, was making a radical statement for that time. It was a
period of technological triumphalism; organic chemistry, radio, electricity,
the internal combustion engine and many other technologies were taking
the world forward under the banner of “progress”.

Today, Engels' comment is a truism. Supporters of capitalist technology
development no longer pretend that technology does just what it is supposed
to. They argue that the benefits of technology outweigh the damage. A giant
oil tanker is a miracle of modern engineering, but it can also release
vast amounts of oil pollution into the oceans. A nuclear power reactor
is an incredibly complex machine for boiling water to produce electricity,
but it also poisons people.

The “revenge effect” of technology, as writer Edward Tenner terms it,
operates independently of the economic system. Engels described both pre-capitalist
and capitalist examples. Capitalism, however, creates a new dilemma: the
purpose of investment is profit, not the production of something useful.
In the case of cigarettes, nuclear power or advertising, the product is
less than useful. A socialist society which prioritised development of
technology for human need would have no reason to continue such development
if undesirable consequences emerged.

Sometimes there is a positive revenge effect. Recent studies have shown
that the use of mobile phones by young people is reducing the level of
cigarette smoking. Apparently, a mobile phone in your hand looks “cooler”
than a cigarette.

What about the potential cancer risks and other biological damage that
mobile phone use can do to the user? It may be decades before the extent
of the damage is known, but the market has no interest in discovering the
result. I'd prefer a world where the good that technology does is more
than an accidental outcome of its use.

BY GREG HARRIS

From GLW issue 429