Paving the Way to Hell?
I recently listened to a local broadcast in my home country (Nigeria) and the show hosts were discussing how nylon was invented. On the show, the hosts mentioned how the inventors had marvelled at their discovery and ironically, part of their joy was how they thought the material would not be single-use but recyclable. Little did they know about the scale of the unintended consequences of the production and use of the material as we can see today.
This got me thinking about some of the other interventions through science and technology that we have that — seemed good at the time but — did not serve us well down the line. I did not have to think too much to come up with the smart phones and their social apps. They came with the promise of a better connection, an aid for communication and a glue for society.
Although these promises have been largely fulfilled, over time these pieces of goodness have turned into monsters we now have to tame and control. All these remind me of the proverb ”The road to hell is paved with good intentions” — Unknown. The subject of sustainability is oftentimes discussed in terms of posterity — how beneficial the outcomes are (of an intervention) for future generations, question is:
* how far ahead should one think about unintended consequences when developing the idea for an intervention?
* what happens when we identify a possible unintended consequence, albeit on a small scale? Do we pull the plug or is it premature to deal with this then?
* who should deal with the unintended consequences and when should they be dealt with?
You can read more about the invention of nylon here: https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/invention-nylon.
