Term Paper on "Why Things Bite Back"

Term Paper 5 pages (1721 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Bite Back

Ever since Frankenstein. This chapter talks about the basics of humans and the machines they use. It notes that people are often frustrated by machines and technology, and they expect it to malfunction. The author also believes that society wants "revenge" on the machines, or wants to "get even" with them. He maintains it is psychological in nature, even though people can acknowledge their lives are better because of technology. The main topic of the chapter is "revenge effects," which the author maintains is not a "side effect," but a direct result of a situation or technology that leads to a need or feeling for revenge. The author notes, "Technology alone usually doesn't produce a revenge effect. Only when we anchor it in laws, regulations, customs, and habits does an irony reach its full potential" (Tenner, 1996, p. 7). The author notes there are many other types of effects at work besides the revenge effect, and gives examples of them to make his point. He maintains the revenge effect happens because of things we cannot foresee, and there are "reverse revenge effects," with are unexpected benefits of technology. He maintains we have become tool managers, and that the tools, as they become more complex, become less predictable, so they become more frustrating. In addition, as they become more complex, they become more prone to failure. He talks a lot about technology of the 19th century and how it has changed life, and compares our lives now to lives then. Finally, he talks about how disasters can create powerful change, and controlling them is risky.

Chapter 2: Medicine: Conquest of the catastrophic. This chapter blends technology with medicine and talks about why we know more about medicine and have come a long way in curing disease, but in general, people still "feel worse" than they did in decades past. He maintains people are more anxious about being sick, even though medicine has improved, and that might be a "mental revenge effect." He maintains that the industrial age actually helped increase our life spans, and that economic growth somehow encourages better health. He cites several different periods where overall health increased, even before advances in food and packaging safety advances, and shows how eating habits have changed through the years. He also talks about some of the terrible medical practices of two centuries ago, before there was an understanding of how the body and its organs really function. As doctors grew more knowledgeable, they developed more localized treatments that attacked certain areas of the body, rather than general treatments. New instruments were developed that helped doctors find symptoms, and more illnesses were identified and found able to be treated with localized treatments. Chemical understanding also helped develop more drugs that were able to treat specific diseases, and more drugs developed in the 20th century that helped cure a variety of diseases. Emergency care took better care of urgent needs, like accidents, disasters, and epidemics, and military medicine helped in at least some of these advances. He also notes how immunity helps guard against disease, and vaccines help protect us from widespread outbreaks, as well. He talks about malpractice, the heavy reliance on tests, drug interactions, and serious errors because of too much reliance on technology, and other medical dangers, and that people need to be vigilant about their medical care.

Chapter 3: Medicine: Revenge of the chronic. This chapter continues discussion of medical advances and technology, including the idea that health care professionals are making themselves indispensable to help create more of a demand for their services. He contends the patient is a "whole system" and has to be treated as such, and that chronic illness, once a thing of the past, is on the rise again, even with better technology. He believes that people were living longer, but developing more chronic diseases later in life that would ultimately end their lives. He thinks in the past that infectious diseases often covered up chronic diseases like heart disease, and that many people died of infections, when today, that number is far lower, so people are free to develop more chronic diseases. He talks about how people often look to unorthodox treatments when traditional medicine does not work, and that the "cost of survival" is very high, because people are living longer and requiring more medical care. This also refers to the high health costs of military combat. The effects can last for decades, and all the modern wars, from World War I through Vietnam and even today's conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan prove that stress from combat is a very heavy price to pay for winning the war. Another example is advanced technology that improves survivability from brain injury. While far fewer people die from head trauma, there are more surviving with disabilities associated with brain injury, another very high cost. Childhood cancer survivors also have more long-term health issues, and studies show that people who experience more infectious diseases show more heart and arterial disease. He talks about reproduction and its effects on the body, and that types of infection are resurging because they are developing immunity to treatments, including high uses of antibiotics in agriculture, which is affecting human health. Some attempts to live better, like dieting and quitting smoking can have negative effects on the body, and that areas like dieting are a process that really never ends. He ends by saying we need more "scheduled maintenance" than ever before to combat chronic illness in our lives.

Chapter 4: Environmental disasters: Natural and human-made. The author talks about how technology has allowed us to live longer lives, and it has increased our safety from many environmental disasters. There is no way to end most environmental disasters, but technology has allowed more people to survive, but often with more damage that must be addressed, which ends up costing more in time and money. Richer countries fare better in disasters, largely because of the systems they create to protect them, like fire departments, and because they can afford to build defenses against many types of disasters, like floodwalls and levees. As the population expands, they tend to expand into areas that are less stable and secure, and that creates an assortment of problems, from safety issues to infrastructure. He shows how deaths have decreased dramatically from tropical storms and floods in the United States, but property damaged has grown just as dramatically. Ironically, he talks about the time it would take to evacuate a major city like New Orleans, long before the effects of Hurricane Katrina proved him absolutely right. He talks about how preparation helps protect people from dying in earthquakes, and that stronger construction requirements help save lives (that is apparent in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake). He talks about fire management and how drought contributes to forest fires, and that more people are in the path of forest fires than ever before, leading to more survival, but far more property damage. He argues there are times to let a fire go on its own, and times to heavily manage a fire and that managers need to understand the difference. He talks about eroding seacoasts, too, and how the shoreline is in retreat. He also talks about the high cost of energy production and what it is doing to the world, along with our increasing dependence on it. He talks about the high cost of clean up that can actually lead to more pollution, and the cost of oil spills on the environment, and argues this has become a chronic problem, even with efforts to make ships safer. He talks about the dangers of relying on wood for heating, and mentions hazards are increasing, rather than decreasing.

Chapter 5: Promoting pests. Pests can be anything that uses environmental change caused by humans to cause injury or damage to humans. Pests can overtake the natural population and sometimes overcome it entirely. He talks about shipping spreading rats around the world, and how destructive these rats are to natural populations. He talks about how new technologies in agriculture have created more invasive pests that are more tolerant to pesticides and diseases, and that some clean up actions can lead to better conditions for some plants and animals, but actually make life better for pests, too. One example is cleaning up harbors that leads to more destruction from shipworms and other pests. He shows how invasive species can easily travel around the world, like the zebra mussels, and that improvements often lead to other unforeseen complications. He discusses the many hazards and pests that our modern lifestyle depends on, and talks about pests like dust mites that live in all our homes and can help add to conditions such as asthma, and that flea infestations are up because of more pets in households, and he talks about allergies and how our lifestyles can help produce them, too. He talks about the way humans tend to want to… READ MORE

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