Tenner - Why Things Bite Back

Side effects

Revenge effects - the interaction of technology with people in ways unforseeable

Alarm systems on cars
Relocate tortoises

Frankenstein and the idea of malevolent machines

Frankenstein did not consider the body as a system - leads to disaster

The parts of a system interact in unpredictable and unexpected ways

Technology systems and bugs - only a system can have a bug

System effects

tightly coupled systems - late 20th century technologies have multiple tightly coupled components that are very complex (interaction has unpredictable consequences)

Positive effects of tightly coupled, complex technology - disaster effects lead to intense efforts to prevent failure - airplanes, nuclear weapons, global warming

Kass - End of Courtship

Several levels of this article:

Technology and culture:

Ability to prevent conception leads to fractured gender relations; changes in the culture of gender relations; disintegrating social relationships - decline of marriage processes, rise of divorce, damage to children, who reproduce this psychic damage in new ways, such as in the end of courting and the rise of anonymous sex

Prevent conception - cultural changes that are self-reinforcing (changes in mores lead to sex education that leads to more radical changes in mores); the postponement of adulthood and entension of adolescence in unconstrained sexual adventures; the deepening of rabid individualism - "it's all about me - reality TV shows"
unclothed young women and girls - the "ho" look

Kass is very unhappy about these changes - why?

What would he say to Margaret Sanger when she condemns "Sex servitude"?

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