Revenge effect

Edward Tenner, in his book Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences ((C) 1996, Knopf), coined the phrase revenge effect to describe the unintended negative consequences of technology. An example is the revenge effect of the air conditioner: air conditioners work by exporting heat and excess moisture from a building, making the air inside the building more comfortable; the revenge effect is that, since the air conditioners move this heat and moisture outside, the outside world becomes hotter, more humid, and less comfortable. This is most noteworthy in cities, where thousands, if not millions, of air conditioners do their part to made the outside air (and the inside air, for those who lack air conditioning) hot, humid, and miserable. Like this air-conditioning example, many revenge effects undermine the expected gains of the involved technology.

Revenge effects can be found in many, many disciplines, but some of the largest revenge effects involve disasters. New Orleans is an easy example: dikes and walls allowed the city to expand into otherwise flood-prone low lying areas, with the revenge effects being 1) the constant requirement for pumping water out of the city, and 2) catastrophic flooding when the dikes broke. But New Orleans is not the only example.

For many years, the forestry service had a policy of suppressing all forest fires, whether naturally occurring or not. At the time, this seemed a good idea, uncontrolled fire being generally a destructive thing, and money, men, and machines were poured into this effort, successfully containing and extinguishing forest fires. The eventual result, however, was the build-up of the underbrush that such fires had previously periodically cleared out. Today, forest fires burn hotter and fiercer than they used to, destroying trees that tended to survive normal fires, because the flames feed off of the built-up underbrush. Our previous fire suppression activities have made today's fores harder to suppress.

I have previously discussed risk homeostasis as it relates to driving, and arguably, this is another type of revenge effect.

Revenge effects are difficult to avoid, in part because they are difficult to predict. Everything is interrelated and interconnected. But they do deserve special attention, because the astute observer may see them before they become severe. Of course, the solution may well have revenge effects of its own. Two steps forward; one step back.