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