| Description |
xiii, 346 pages ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
1. Ever Since Frankenstein -- 2. Medicine: Conquest of the Catastrophic -- 3. Medicine: Revenge of the Chronic -- 4. Environmental Disasters: Natural and Human-Made -- 5. Promoting Pests -- 6. Acclimatizing Pests: Animal -- 7. Acclimatizing Pests: Vegetable -- 8. The Computerized Office: The Revenge of the Body -- 9. The Computerized Office: Productivity Puzzles -- 10. Sport: The Risks of Intensification -- 11. Sport: The Paradoxes of Improvement -- 12. Another Look Back, and a Look Ahead |
| Summary |
Includes information on agriculture, air pollution, bicycling, cancer, carp, carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), chronic health problems, computer-related health problems, computer related productivity, cumulative trauma disorders (CTDs), disasters, disease, environmental disasters, fires, Florida, golf, health, helmets, herbicides, hydrilla, insects, computer keyboards, malevolent machinery, melaleuca trees, motorization, office related health problems, pesticides, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), rearranging effects, recomplicating effects, recongesting effects, repeating effects, reverse revenge effects, software, storms, tree pests, zebra mussels, etc |
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Technology has made us healthier and wealthier, but we arenʼt necessarily happier in our zealously engineered surroundings. Edward Tenner is a connoisseur of what he calls revenge effects-the unintended, ironic consequences of the mechanical, chemical, biological and medical forms of ingenuity that have been hallmarks of the progressive, improvement-obsessed twentieth century. In seeking out these revenge effects, he ranges far and wide in our cultural landscape to discover an insistent pattern of paradox that implicates everything from black lung to bluebirds, wooden tennis rackets to Windows 95. His insatiable curiosity embraces technology in all its guises: televised competitive skiing, which is much less exciting not that state-of-the-art cameras have eliminated the blur and lost motion of older broadcasts; low-tar cigarettes, which may encourage smokers to defer quitting altogether, justified margins, which became de rigueur just a psychologists and typographers were realizing that uneven right-hand edges are both more legible and more attractive; the meltdown at Chernobyl, which occurred during a test of enhanced safety procedures; and much, much more |
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While Tenner is fascinated by these phenomena in their own right, Why Things Bite Back is not merely a compendium of technological perversities. There is a historical and, indeed, ethical agenda behind his new look at the obvious. After all, Murphyʼs Law as originally uttered by a frustrated military engineer was meant not as a fatalistic, defeatist principle but as a call for alerrtness and adaptation. Tenner heatrily concurs. Things do go wrong, with a vengeance, and assigning cause can be as trick as unscrambling an egg. Reducing revenge effects demands substituting brains for stuff-deintensifying our quest for more, better, faster, in favor of finesse. And in Tennerʼs estimation, humanity is perfectly capable of this adjustment. BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-329) and index |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-329) and index |
| SUBJECT |
Information series. Technology http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n84707263 -- Economic aspects.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh99005484
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| Subject |
Technology -- Economic aspects.
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Technology -- Social aspects.
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| LC no. |
95038036 |
| ISBN |
0679425632 |
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1857025601 |
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