Better Anticipating Unintended Consequences

Abstract

If people want the benefits of innovations, must they simply accept the unintended adverse consequences? Versions of this question haunt many who care about the social implications of technology. Technological design processes could include impact assessment steps, but not all do. Adoption in the marketplace may ignore spillover effects. Jurisprudence is often reactive and focused on remediating obvious wrongs. Public policy also often requires evidence of harm before legislators or administrators are willing to act. The failure to anticipate adverse consequences is sometimes framed as a moral lapse, but it could equally be about competence or incentives. This paper considers the relative merits of methodology (analogizing, interpolating, projecting,) and procedure (reflecting, reasoning, discourse) as systematic approaches to anticipating unintended consequences of innovation. It weighs the efficacy of such approaches against current reactive remedies, highlighting the importance of tailoring approach to context, and building in early learning opportunities (observing and testing). Several examples suggest that society is often playing catch-up and trying to avoid adverse consequences before the innovation is widely deployed rather than before it is initially introduced.