It would be hard to top Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge as the title for a book of “Essays in Unintended Consequences”—the subtitle for a collection of thought-provoking, finely crafted pieces by long-time Harvard Magazine contributor Edward Tenner, JF ’72 (American Philosophical Society/University of Pennsylvania, $34.95). An eclectic observer of the human foibles and follies embedded in technology, design, and culture at large, he has written about everything from hats and chairs to wild animals and Amish inventors. In an introduction to this wise, entertaining 600-plus-page omnium gatherum, Tenner teases out the themes he has explored. The first, “risk,” is timely as society seems uncritically infatuated with the newest technomarvel, artificial intelligence.
My first scholarly book, Why Things Bite Back, emerged from a file folder of clippings and photocopies begun in the 1980s, which I labeled as Pushing the Envelope. The phrase originated as test pilot jargon in the 1970s. Tom Wolfe popularized it in his bestseller on the space program, The Right Stuff….It originally referred to the enthusiasm of elite pilots for exceeding the official limits of aircraft safety to explore possible breakthroughs in perfomance. As Chuck Yeager, its leading exponent and the first person to fly at the supersonic speeds that were once considered fatal, explained, “[T]he real barrier wasn’t in the sky but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight.”
There seemed to be many less exalted versions of pushing the envelope in everyday terrestrial life. Legislation and industry standards set many boundaries for safety, usually with a margin of error. For some people, “an abundance of caution” (to use a favorite phrase from the peak Covid-19 years) is an excess, and progress—or mere profit—demands exceeding the limits. In that sense nearly every motorist pushes the envelope regularly by driving a few miles above the posted speed limit.
Some risk analysts have suggested further that safety technologies such as seat belts and antilock brakes may be futile because they lead to riskier behavior that offsets the savings in injuries and deaths. As I examined such arguments…automotive safety statistics suggest that they are mistaken as general long-term rules, though they may apply when innovations are novelties. (I recall a colleague demonstrating antilock brakes to me on an icy back road.) On the other hand, football helmets may cushion shocks to the brain but are still unable to prevent chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) from repeated blows.
