IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 25

increasingly faster pace of technological change, we need to be cognizant of increasing risk for crises
and catastrophes. It is the nature
of the beast. Yet those risks are
almost never seriously discussed
when new technologies are being
developed and considered for adoption, but delayed until the risks are
realized and the problems start to
emerge. By that time, it is often
too late to block the unexpected
consequences. Instead, the solutions often rely on developing even
newer technologies to remedy the
problems after the fact.
There are multiple complicating factors that lead to even higher
risk for new technologies. First, the
rapid introduction of new technologies can overwhelm the ability of
humans and social institutions to
absorb the changes and to adjust to
them. An example is the cell phone.
A variety of health risks have been
conjectured in relation to the cell
phone, ranging from exposure to
radio waves, to neck and wrist
injuries from constant use. But
the biggest risk comes from our
inability to adjust our lifestyles to
the cell phone. Instead we incorporate cell phones directly into our
existing activities such as driving
and walking in traffic. Talking on
the phone while driving, or even
walking in traffic, has become a
major source of accidents, which
was not foreseen as a risk at the
time of development and adoption
of the technology. There are many
other possible risks that are still not
well understood, including the long
term psychological and professional effects of being in constant
contact with a small number of
friends and colleagues. The effect
of those intrusions into our privacy
and our "alone" time are still just
vague conjectures, even so many
years after the introduction of the
technology [10], [29]
risk rises when many technologies are introduced in rapid
succession and their social effects
interact with each other, leading to

compound effects. This risk is most
pronounced in introducing new
synthetic chemicals to the environment. Not only each new chemical
introduces risk to the environment
that is difficult to assess, but combinations of chemicals can have a
qualitatively different impact than
each alone. Our scientific understanding of such compound effects
is minimal, and in fact the scientific method does not easily lend
itself to such studies. Especially
in statistical analysis, there is a
tendency to focus on one variable
at a time while holding others constant; but compound effects require
a combinatorial analysis of looking at all possible combinations of
variables, which gets unwieldy and
impractical very quickly. There
are numerous theories that suggest
that some of the most intractable
modern diseases such as obesity,
diabetes, cancer, heart disease,
allergies, depression, and autism
may have multiple and compound
causes, and that may be the reason for their intractability. There
is new evidence for example that
suggests that our modern sedentary lifestyle, as unhealthy as it is,
may not be a factor in causing the
obesity epidemic. The cause may
be multiple factors in combination,
such as what we eat, how much we
eat, and some environmental pollutants called endocrine disrupters
that disrupt our appetite regulation, and make us want to eat more
than necessary in the first place.
A consequence of this finding is
that exercise may not help you lose
weight [26].
A more complex example
involves asthma, allergies, and
autism; three modern epidemics
that are poorly understood, and
even more poorly treated. There
is new evidence suggesting that
all three may be auto-immune diseases and triggered by an infection
of the mother during pregnancy
[32]. Strangely, it is not the infection that damages the fetus, but it is
the immune reaction of the mother

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SuMMEr 2013

to the infection. The critical question is why then, the rates of these
diseases have been skyrocketing to
epidemic levels, when the infection
rates of mothers have not changed
or even declined in recent years.
The answer turns out to be changes
in mothers' bodies that are increasingly overreacting to infections,
and producing disproportionately
strong immune responses. The
evidence suggests that the reason
for such overreaction is our sterile,
urban, and chemically and pharmaceutically saturated environment that isolates us from certain
micro-organisms and parasites that
are common in the natural environment of soil, water, and plants.
Exposure to those micro-organisms
and parasites turns out to be critical
to build the human immune system
and to regulate it. Lack of lifetime
exposure these organisms leaves
our immune systems underdeveloped, and any infection that is
common in the congested urban
environment causes an overreaction by such an immune system.
Such a compound risk that involves
lack of exposure to certain microorganisms, but extra exposure to
other infection-causing organisms,
is difficult to identify and even
more difficult to remedy. The technologies creating these compound
risks are also multiple, varied, and
not simultaneously developed, as in
urban development, transportation,
housing, deforestation, agricultural, chemical and pharmaceutical
technologies [32].
More importantly, vicious cycles
and arms races may result from the
introduction of new technologies,
leading to a dramatic increase in risk.
Technology companies increasingly
rely on constant change and innovation for competitive advantage,
because many new technologies
are information-based and are easy
to imitate. Companies like Apple,
Google, and Amazon are changing
from year to year, sometimes introducing completely new products,
and even new business models. In
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