Unintended Consequences
(Notes from English 415/516 from the week of 5 Nov 01)
Dooling and Joy share the notion that technology is created for anticipated uses, but there are typically other, unanticipated uses.
Dooling's piece is speculative fiction in which the author explores some social implications of technological manipulations of the human body aimed at achieving immortality. For Dooling, the technology in question is characterized by allowing individuals to consume more resources than they produce. Dooling is also concerned with the question of when quantitative changes make qualitative changes. Dooling's critique of technological diffusion is based on fictional example.
Joy's argumentative essay adds to Dooling's position the notion that three current technologies--robotics, genetic engineerings, and nanotechnology--are qualitatively different from all earlier technologies because they are self-replicating which should make them more alarming.
Both articles, though provocative, fail to acknowledge that serendipity, too, is an unintended consequence. They do not count the cost of that loss in their arguments. Also, neither addresses directly the question of who has standing, in any given situation, to restrain science and technology. These thorny and inexact issues require further study.
Webpages dealing with unintended consequences were contributed by each project group:
Group A (the nature of the news)