all of us and making sure every voice is heard. it's like legally enforced, that every voice is heard. and so to me, as long as folks are voting as long as folks are engaged, as long as we're fighting as long as we're showing up and pushing for the change that we know our communities deserve and the people we care about deserve we're to be okay. just can't give up. and that's what gives me hope because i know all of you are here tonight because you don't want to give up. i'm not giving up either. so let's go. jocelyn benson. ladies and gentlemen. welcome them to benjamin franklin hall on this lovely evening on peter dockerty.

i'm editor at large of the recently american philosophical society press the longest operating scholarly publisher in north america began in 1771. it's my honor pleasure to introduce one of the first authors of the newly relaunched press list, the historian of technology and essayist tenner in formula fitting the editorial strategy of the new apes press, we returned to apes founder benjamin franklin's stated mission for the society of promoting useful knowledge and chose to build the new list around the goal of redefining useful knowledge for the 21st century. following the goal we set about signing on the history sociology, politics, philosophy, anthropology energy and economics of useful. the important institution and

society that is increasing is today. we want our list to be the focal point of a large and lively conversation often about the production, curation and communication of knowledge in society. today, in ed turner's book why the hindenburg had a smoking lounge, essays and unintended consequences, we signed a book precisely that the history sociology, politics, philosophy, anthropology and economics of useful knowledge as expressed in the way modern life works and sometimes doesn't work from technology through organizations and politics. i first heard the name ed turner back in the early nineties when i was in new york working for the free press. at the time it was an editor at princeton university press where he published very distinguished list of science books, including works by authors such as richard

feynman's qed comes to mind after. ed left the press in 1991, and before i moved to princeton university press in 1992, ed work on a book that would the 1996 bestseller why things back technology and the revenge of unintended consequences. when i think of the so-called revenge of technology, the example always comes to mind is boxing gloves. the technology introduced protect boxers from head injuries, but that actually induced greater head by extending boxers that's on that's an anticipated for you. since then ed has written two related books including efficiency paradox, a book about what big data can't do and our own devices on how technology has remade our bodies howard siegel reviewing own devices in the journal nature judge that

and i quote tanner has become a worthy successor to such luminaries as business philosopher peter drucker, social critic lewis mumford and historian lyn white and connecting technologies past, present and future. all the while, ed has been writing essays that have traced his exploration of unintended consequences well beyond technologies into other aspects of life from organizations in politics through design information, artificial intelligence, and the lives of animals. his new book why the hindenburg had a smoking lounge which we are launching evening covers all of fields connecting the unintended dots between and among them and ways to think about how ideas such consequences often very different from those intended in his remarks, ed will be us about the intellectual history of unintended consequences and the

thinkers, including prominent philadelphia and member robert k merton, who established the outlines of this of social inquiry within sociology of knowledge. bob merton was also my advisor in my first job as an editor, and so has special status in this evening's talk. ed tenner holds a b.a. from princeton and a ph.d. from the university of chicago. he was a junior fellow of the harvard society of fellows and a guggenheim fellow. is a distinguished scholar of the smithsonian's glenn wilson center for the study of invention and innovation and visiting scholar in the rutgers university history department. in addition to his editorial work at princeton university press, where we did not overlap it, also has held visiting research positions in the woodrow wilson international center. scholars, the institute for advanced study, the university of pennsylvania, and in the

princeton departments of and programs of geosciences and information technology policy. for the second year in a row. he will be teaching a princeton freshman seminar on understanding disaster as a lecturer in sociology. since since bite back appeared in 1996, he has been invited and invited speaker at dozens of technology corporations university and government agencies. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome ed. thank you so much, peter, for that kind introduction. thank all you for coming here to this lecture. it is such a privilege. be here at this great distinguished institution that i have long admired.

i have worked in its library and seen as exhibitions, and it's really a special honor and pleasure. i'd like to start by thanking everyone who has made this possible the friends of, the american philosophical society, the american philosophical press and its director, junta peter dockerty, of course, with whom this book would not have been written without whom this book would not have been written. his colleague, carpenter, who has also indispensable and a special thanks to the design and production team of kevin connor and dave price. you see their work here. if have any complaint with the content that i have written remember that you can't judge a cover by its book. so this talk have four parts. the first is the potential

copernican revolution in social science that never happened. and why it never happened. the second is the emergence of a study. unintended consequences from 1970s to about 2005, led by outstanding thinkers, some of whom i had the of meeting. the third part is the shift from devices and structures to systems from micro macro unintended consequences. with the rise of social media web 2.0 around 25 and the political upheavals that have followed and i will with the possibility of positive paradoxical unintended consequence answers grounds for hope. if we make friends with the chaos of the universe, this is the story of a revolution that quite happened in 1936 at the depths of the depression the result to a large extent, the

wholly smooth protective tariff, 1938, 26 year old, newly credentialed harvard sociology, ph.d. future american philosophical society member robert k merton published a paper in the american sociological review, one of the paper's most cited in his discipline, quote, the unanticipated consequences of propulsive social action. as he noted, this had been a theme of luminaries including machiavelli, vico, adam smith and marx. engels warned pereda and marx of labor he might have gone back to early christian concepts of. felix culpa the happy guilt, original sin that made possible the advent of christ and the salvation humanity. while the language of the paper was modest, professional, temperate. its insight that many or most phenomena in the social are unintended for better as well as for worse was both obvious and

revolutionary. even 21st century management gurus like tom peters acknowledge it quote unintended consequences, intended consequences strategies rarely unfold. we imagined. intended consequence is a rare close quote merging promised quote a monograph now in preparation in to the history and analysis of this program with its vast scope and manifold implications. acknowledging that the present paper elliptical at times somewhere along the way he abandoned project perhaps because it risk becoming a book about everything. his dissertation on the sociology of science and technology and century england became a classic in theories of the relationship between religion and social change and. it proved much more successful as. a case study in the tradition of marx weber's still debated argument that this worldly asceticism some of protestant entrepreneurs launched

capitalism. merton still controversial findings linked the values of english, puritanism and german protestant patriotism with the rise of modern empirical scientific spirit. citing, for example, the puritan majority of over 60% in the original membership of the royal society, which the american philosophical society was patterned by benjamin franklin, who was a member of both merton's apparent retreat from his monograph project may discouraged other social scientists attempting it, revealing one of the paradoxes of the subject because it is so universal and important, it is unwieldy and best suited for case studies rather than for grand theories. the princeton university library alone has no fewer 105 books with titles that begin the irony of. unintentional unintentionally analysis might have produced copernican revolution social science, but it is more likely that taken to its conclusion, it

would have unleashed unintended consequences on. any scholar attempting it. thomas koons ambiguous position so-called paradigm shift sold a million books. but as i during his years at princeton, it also the acrimony of professional not to mention later publication of his former graduate student, the filmmaker earl morris's devastating memoir of the ashtray and ashtray, by the way, was one that tom kuhn, who was a chain smoker, allegedly at morris when morris was trying to argue for the objectivity of science, despite ubiquity and academic fascination, was still no center for the study of consequences. a google search reveals there apparently has never been such an organization, although its new artificial intelligence described as what one would study if it existed. this absence is surprising given

the proliferation of funded entities at american universities. the princeton school of public affairs, for example, lists schools and programs. there are two reasons for this absence. the first is evident in our polarized world left and right. agree on the prevalence of unintended consequences, but each blames the other side for adverse results. the second is apparent only to those who like have helped establish a center in. my case, an ill fated bicentennial program 50 years ago. let's you are a scholar or scientist who does have an angel donor for such a project providing handsome salaries and comfortable accommodations to the bicentennial nonprofit i helped set up in the mid seventies could afford a suite in an elegant 1920s and neo-gothic skyscraper overlooking chicago's lakefront. if you are starting the center support your work even with an able administrator, you are likely to be spending your time raising funds for fellowships and failing university and

government reports and doing everything. but the unintended consequences research you set up the center to pursue. in other words, living in unintended, i reached the stage or financial support remaining a secret of our founder before we could publish a single book. the organization's failure led an intentionally to my publishing and writing. there are also ideological barriers to the study of consequence for every enthusiast. there seems to be a hater and dwelling on the unintended of an opponent's policies invites retaliation and kind. this was the point of the most critique of the theme by the economist, an american philosophical society member, albert hirschman. hirschman. paradoxically, formidable credentials as a student. unintended consequences. one of his most celebrated and controversial ideas, the guiding hand, was a takeoff on adam

smith's metaphor for the market and development projects observed in 1967. hirschman noted that many successful programs might never have been launched, had all the difficulties known. but once a commitment had been made, human ingenuity prevailed. new and unforeseen means were found. this, of course, is the reverse of the idea of the planning fallacy that. promoters of projects systematically underestimate the time and resources needed. perhaps the most famous cited by theorists on both is the sydney opera house, having exceeded its budget by 1300 percent. it nevertheless remains a masterpiece. australia's unofficial icon and thus a bargain bargain. at the institute in 1992, when i was visiting hirschman gave me a preview. his argument to temper any project on failure. it published in 1996. it was published in 1992 as the rhetoric of perversity,

futility. jeopardy. during the previous year, when i was visiting the school of social, i found that provoked by the rise of neo conservative ism, hershman took aim at the characteristic of the old and new right that reforms urged by progressives would be self-defeating or useless. but he did not spare fellow liberals use of similar attacks on conservative in the early 1990s. the internet was still a niche service until the arrival of the world wide web in modern browsers in 1995 and its political implications unforeseeable. it was assumed digital life would be another channel for established commercial media and political organizations. unintended consequences. the 1990s were still fixated on two themes that had emerged in the 19 century. one was the apparently treacherous behavior of everyday devices reflected in the famous

twilight zone episode thing about machines in, which the snooty, arrogant critic bartlett finchley is finally assassinate by his sped up domestic appliances. fans of hitler belloc the great humorist will recall verse which i quoted in byte back quote lord tried to mend the electric light. it struck him dead and served him right. it is the business of the wealthy man to give employment to the artisan. its inverse the frequency of apparently stupid by the users of technology represented by the failed experiments in the early cold war space program. the air force engineer, ed murphy was blaming the operators rather the machines and what he really was less if it can go, it will go wrong. in another folksy saying you can't make it foolproof because. fools are too ingenious. this sentiment has been contested safety engineers who have developed techniques for

mistake, mistake proofing, applied with great success in japan, where there are known as poker yokes. three giants dominated the unintended consequences studies the 1990s, the yale socio ologist charles peril, the duke engineering professor henry petroski and member, and the cognitive psychologist donald norman. originally the university of california at san diego. pirro's work on technological disasters was inspired by the nuclear meltdown at three mile island in 1979, notable not for loss of life or property, but for the discovery of the world's vulnerability to operator errors and critical systems. the event inspired radical redesign of nuclear system controls and a reaction against the technology that lasted until the consequences of fossil fuels and the demands of artificial intelligence inspired a 20th century revival. an unintended consequence of decision aimed at preventing unintended consequence is in the

paper published in 1981. peril introduced influential concepts of loose coupling and tight coupling and technological systems to analyze risk. instead of blaming operators murphy style peril focused on what he called error inducing. considering nuclear plants, he questioned safety engineers goal of preventing all mistakes. even with the most careful design, some technological systems remained vulnerable to cascades of failure and inevitable deviations. a good example is motor error when the stockholm collided with the pride of the italian fleet, the andrea doria, in 1956, resulting in a total loss. investigators. the major cause was the mistaken of a radar screen that a single display in two settings near and far. the navigator of the stockholm. the wrong one. and believed the ship was several times farther from the liner than it really was.

x-ray machines with. similar choices of scales have led to tragic deaths when technicians have been unaware that they were selecting intensity beams, preventing these mode errors has become an essential of interface design. pirro was skeptical of such remedies and tightly coupled systems like nuclear plants. he argued that nuclear power was systematically to a position apparently vindicated by the meltdown of the chernobyl reactor, the soviet union, two years later, which contaminated 150,000 square kilometers required the evacuation of 200,000 people and led to an epidemic of excess thyroid cancer in children. henry petroski, whose career as unintended consequences analyst also shaped by three mile island. petroski was an expert in engineering physics doing work on fracture analysis at argonne national laboratory, a for nuclear plant research anticipating nuclear research funding cuts.

petroski to academia with a new focus on interpreting engineering thinking, lay audiences and especially on engineering failures. for petroski failure was both deplorable and inevitable in engineering as designers develop new paradigms after the failure of previous models as they grew more confident, they increased the scale of their work until it reached tipping point. in such disasters as the wreck of the titanic in 1912 and the destruction of tacoma narrows bridge, galloping from unanticipated harmonic vibrations under wind load in 1940. the designers of both the ocean liner and the bridge thomas andrews and, leon moore, s.f. respectively at the top of their professions as was titanic's master captain edward. as new generations of engineers expand innovative paradigms, they forget the lessons of past generations and may in turn overreach reject king perot's rejection of entire categories.

petroski saw catastrophes necessary tragedies in the improvement safety as he later wrote in washington post on the 100th anniversary of titanic's sinking quote. had the titanic sunk? competing steamship lines have wanted to one avoid start by building still larger ships with fewer lifeboats and bulkheads which and bulkheads which restrict passenger movement resulting in even more dangerous vessels. the sinking provided a wake up call that fundamentally changed maritime regulation, including the establishment of an international ice patrol. stronger ships outfitted with enough lifeboats accommodate passengers and crew became the norm. overall safety improved by tragedy, close quote. petroski might have added that new safety measures, if not carefully applied, could result in new tragedies as when the excursion eastland capsized in river in 1915 while young factory workers were boarding

for a company trip. the lifeboats deaths deck stiffening added after titanic made the eastland fatally unstable as the george w hinton showed in a book in 1995. norman's specialty, excuse me. enormous. specialty wasn't is human centered design. the prevention of errors and injuries. through an understanding of human behavior as well as technology enthusiasts of alternatives like the dvorak simplified keyboard attacked customary quality key arrangement carried over typewriters to word processors as an inefficient legacy of the need slow typing speed. in 19th century and early 20th century models norman and collaborator david remillard debunked, the supposed advances of the dvorak layout showing that increased typing speed only marginally over quality, implying that retraining people refitting keys would not be worth the time and expense. the 1990 is also the heyday of

the critical technology insiders, computer scientists and other professionals who often questioned the cornucopia and futurism of silicon valley's founders, marketers and social scientists fascinated by technological change. rob kling, who died much too young in 2003, was a scientist who retrained as a social adjuster and wrote one of the most important papers of the 1990s helping frame computer adoption. not a self evident functionality, but as a social. peter g. norman, a pioneer of the predecessor unix operating system at bell labs, still maintains a database computer risks that is a goldmine for all students of unintended consequences. insight in hindsight, for all the anomalies and paradoxes discovered by these and humanists, the technology ical world of the 1990s was not so much a revolution of existing organizations or authorities as its digital extension. newspapers published an

electronic to widen access to their information often without paywalls supported new categories of banner advertising, scientific and medical authorities use the web to distribute the latest research findings to the citizenry. libraries and museums made scads of documents and works of art available. best of all, virtual objects seemed not to replace but to promote in-person visits. even after the dot com burst in 2000, the 15 years from 1992 to 2005 were the golden age of information technology. in 2000, five marked the peak year of newspaper profits. after ten years of the web, the bestselling by microsoft's young ceo, bill gates. his collaborators the road ahead, published in 1996, promised a consumer paradise of, quote, friction, commerce, close

quote. until 2005 or so, the world a plan. then, thanks to moore's law, the theory that processing power would continue to double forever ever every 18 months. so that an electric shaver, it was said already, had more than the hardware and software of the apollo program. paradise was assured we had a plan, a road ahead in the 1990s after the dust of the dot.com bubble in 2000, the terrorist of september 11th and the great recession of 2008, there seemed to be a new dawn at the end of the first centuries decade, a sense that social media would at last fulfill the countercultural and progressive goals of replacing hierarchies with structures. but mike tyson put it everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose by beginning around 2005, the world of journalistic, medical and political authority has been punched in the nose by a new

generation of entrepreneurs, creating unforeseen and crusading creating unforeseen empires. the unattended consequences of the late 20th and early 21st centuries were the new unintended, positive and negative were macworld. first came google in february thousand two, i participated in a so-called scenario planning workshops by the library of congress on the future of born digital. web pages with no counterpart the superior of google's algorithm for discovering was the talk of the meeting, but none of us imagined how it could ever sustain itself. plans to sell the company had fallen through in a brainstorming session. one of us raised the possibility that the us government might have to buy and operate google as a public resource. three years later came the spectacular public offering that still grew an non-committal story from technology review.

god. but for how long? facebook founded. two years after our conference, 2004 offered its own ipo in 2012, raising $16 billion. the year. twitter raised $1.8 billion. google's founders had created an algorithm that seemingly directed information seekers, the most relevant sources based on results of previous searches. unlike the originally, create curated yahoo, it left select into algorithms and this reflected popular ity rather than authority. as a google researcher in a lecture at princeton, i attended a searcher in the united states where, acupuncture is still a marginal movement which see results different. those in asian countries where it mainstream therapy a question framed in a way that suggests a jewish identity would produced one list of links, one that implied anti-semitism would

generate another. it a first step toward realizing the epistemological anarchy that had flourished in some quarters of. academia in the 1980s and 1990s. facebook and twitter took crowdsourcing even further, promising a new freedom to propagate and transmit opinions without gatekeepers and without. an extension of bill gates promised freedom of freedom from friction. these and others like youtube is now owned by google and which is preserving this lecture helped create the kind of virtual communities preached by web visionaries in the 1980s and 1990s. the new york university media studies professor clay shirky, a self-described advocate of the free cultural movement. proclaimed the dawn of the social media age, exuberantly in his 28 book, here comes everybody power of organizing

without organizations, web 2.0 as it was called, punched authorities in the nose. print and even most online was an inefficient way to reach customers. only a handful of readers of business publications, for example, have both the means and the inclination to buy the luxury vacation homes and automobiles traditionally advertise social media companies accumulating and deploy information on users backgrounds and browsing habits to target only the small numbers of potential serious buyers. the diversion of advertising, the already severe concentration of u.s. news media than in previous pandemics that tended to favor the messages of public health and medical authorities. and there was another punch to come. decline of the credibility of those in the eyes of many u.s. citizens is on the rise of influencers from culture and politics. one study of social media in the early of the covid 19 pandemic by silvia your work of the

university of reading and colleagues revealed that the most frequently retweeted posts on twitter now x were made by figures such as barack obama and hillary clinton, as well as president trump and pop culture celebrities. medical and health authorities use. social media, too. but the greatest impact measured by the retweets covid related posts was that the british pop star harry styles, with 97,000 retweets for covid tweet authorities and social media, faced an intractable dilemma because small numbers of dissenters were so zealous, their impact was disproportionate. yet moderating allegedly false information also spread as to charges of censorship among credentialed experts. social media have also elevated a group i call the authorities men and women with strong credentials who had been dissenters in their fields before rise of social media, but now been able to appeal directly to the public.

and some of them now hold high positions in the trump administration. the former lead democratic protectionist economist peter navarro, the dissenting physicians, ahmed ars and jay bhattacharya, and especially the former environmental and campaigner robert f kennedy jr. the proliferation of peer reviewed scientific papers some more carefully review than others, means that there is often some evidence for any point of view. the authorities shattered the norm of politically neutral science creates promised freedom from arrogant gatekeepers, have also been punched in the nose and 2019, even before the covid pandemic, a study by the u.s. writers association authors guild revealed that in the eight years since 2009 itself, a recession year, the income of writers had declined by 2% due to the impact of google, facebook, amazon. the 1990 dream of authors, publishers and agents issue their own work faced amazon's

domination of self-publishing market. amazon owns control of the digital and trade. also encouraged purpose purchase of used copies and excel the consolidation of publishers reducing comp but reducing comfort departments, reducing competition for new book contracts. fortunately for me, it was still vigorous when my book why things buy was auctioned in the early 1990s. artificial has given creators writers visual artists and composers another punch. the sites are trained on countless unlicensed texts and images. there are already dozens of copyright, but silicon valley corporations a combined market valuation to 100 times that of all the world's publishing and media companies combined. and the plaintiffs also face juggernaut of lobbying power, promoting legislation, declaring training, so-called fair use, letting the services compete against creators with their own

words and images as artists painfully note. worst of all, the large models are being trained increasingly on their own. previous output threatening a downward spiral of quality over multiple generations, as this trend threatens to lead to what artificial intelligence researchers call model collapse or, put more bluntly, slop and early in the introduction of large language models. elite professionals believe while artificial intelligence could replace journeyman work, it could help them perform even better. recent research challenges this assumption. a study published last fall in organization of science concludes that, quote, we do not find evidence that high quality service measured by their past performance employment adverse moderates. the adverse effect employment. in fact we find suggestive evidence that top freelancers are disproportionately affected by while businesses still seem to prefer elite workers are few are beginning to shift to

enhanced detriment, especially because evidence suggests that elite that the elite may not be enjoying the expected multiplier effect of new technology and may be less productive because of it. something instructors among should remind their students of and is influencing a substitute for creators declining conventional prospects. in fact social media sites are a doubtful alternative for the great majority who launch them in 2024, the wall street reported that nearly half of all influencers made $15,000 or less. the apparent good news that 12% could earn $100,000 or more was was less encouraging than it seemed. platforms were reducing payouts and pressure and pressuring produce compelling material was grueling. one took tucker received a mere $120 for a video viewed million times and tech tax in the united states, of course, is still uncertain.

on the other side, there are internet service provider fees and lighting costs. insurance managers fees and complex tax situations for those who receive free products. finally, and sadly, some police officers defending the capital and congress did literally get punched during the january 20, 21 insurrection. donald trump, as his attorneys later stressed, had his supporters to go, quote, peacefully, patriotically do whatever his intentions and expectations. the riot was directed not from above, but organized from below in a cruel parody of progressive of mass empowerment through social media. during the past two decades, it appeared that the dream of self-organized protests through mobile and social media, dubbed smarter, more smart mobs by the progressive technological visionaries, rheingold would topple one authoritarian regime another. the year 2020 brought the first blow the chinese government's

suppression previously vigorous free speech in kong, showed that technologically states would squelch electronic dissent. but assault on the capitol was a bottom up grassroots movement, believing against all evidence that the 2020 election had been stolen and attacking a democratically elected legislature in the name of democracy. according a 2023 staff member of the house committee, the events quote of tech, fringe and mainstream platforms were exploited in tandem by right wing activists to bring american to the brink of ruin. these platforms enable to mobilize asian extremists on smaller sites and whipped up conservative grievance larger, more mainstream ones quote. even this still democratic house majority, though, was already unwilling to call out silicon valley. according a washington post analysis, clay shirky proved all too correct when he wrote in 2008, quote, the power coordinate, otherwise dispersed

groups, will continue to improve. new social tools are being invented. the freedom to act as a group is inherently political. but he left out the inverse that usability implies app usability something i have called deviant ingenuity. i can't help wondering. robert kay merton would have made of the world of 2025 was more unintended consequences that he than he had in his generation ever imagined. he was wise to become a prophet. silicon now seems to buy back the very institutions that created it. the ivy league, berkeley and the national science foundation, not to mention the progressive newspapers and magazines that extolled utopia cyber culture. nor does there seem to be any feasible means to counterpunch. yet i find paradoxical grounds for hope in the interpretation that left and right see our trends are instead the kimberly the results of a chaotic sequence of chance events. these may soon to catastrophes,

but there is an equal chance unexpected positive outcomes. my original specialty was central european history, the end of between the two world wars was deep defeated capital of a dissolved taught by torn the violence of communist fascists and ultimately nazis and quote bombed about a bit close quote in the second world war. as the narrator, the third man put it in the film's introduction the soviet occupation did not end until 1955. yet today, vienna is the world's most livable city for the third year in a row, according an economist intelligence unit survey. which reminds me of the saying of the viennese journalist, alfred polgar misinterpreted to contemporary carl kraus, quote, the situation is hopeless but not serious, close quote. thank you.

and i welcome questions. please wait for the mic. here we go. thank you. since you have studied and commented on web 2.0, do you have any thoughts what the potential unintended consequence of web 3.0 and cryptocurrency see will be. a crypto crypto currencies cryptocurrencies. one of the very few things of the 21st century that to my knowledge no science fiction author of the 20th century imagined and i can't begin to enumerate all of the potential from cryptocurrencies. but on the other hand, i would also that that wherever there is there there is also the possible

liberty of some something unexpectedly happening. i can't imagine that yet. but given the current. yes, it. thank you. but could talk a little bit about the smoking on the hindenburg. oh, i was hoping i was i left it out, hoping that someone in the audience would ask you about it and and that was a that was one of the most interesting investigations i had. so part of the study of unintended consequences is taking that that people thought was really, you know, obvious they didn't give any second thought to like there was a smoking on the hindenburg. well, you know isn't there something strange about that? you know, i thought so. fortunately, there is a scholar who wrote an excellent book on the hindenburg for the first

time in a study of kind with the original archives of the zeppelin company. and and i corresponded with him about it. and asked him, of course, the designs of it were there, but there were no records of any discussion of it, no records of, discussion of the risk or anything like that. and he said, well, the papers haven't been you haven't been yet. so who knows? who knows there. so i can't give an answer from the point of view of a designer. however, there is an economic answer. i wrote that essay for for the american enterprise. i've been i've been one of the few people published by both by the aei online and by by mother jones and. and, and, but the economic was really clear. the hindenburg passage on the hindenburg cost twice the fear

of world's most luxurious liner first class. the the the normandy the ship of light, which is the, you know, the greatest ocean liner of all time. so it was really like the concorde in relation to first class on a 747 at the time, which meant that there a small number of potential customers who were willing to have the more spartan accommodations for the great view and, the greater speed and half of them were smokers. so there, there really was no choice but to to accommodate the smokers, the, the smoking was as carefully engineered as you can imagine. it had a it had a negative pressure so that any fire in there would not spread and. there were also no open, open lights, the cigarets and believe it or not too could be lit by

something like the coils that used to come and automobile lighters. but there was there was a little problem there because the person who was supposed to be keeping watch over the passengers that nobody absentmindedly after a few drinks exited with lit smoke was also supposed to be mixing drinks for the passengers. so there was it there was a human factor issue there and and the the there were but it was so well known, though, that there were there were publicity commemorative ashtrays that were sponsored by the by the company made by a company the still existing in pennsylvania. and one of the features of them was a glass dirigible in the of the zeppelin filled with genuine aviation fuel by esso.

i'm telling you i what you're an unintended consequence. you know, you don't have to make anything out and the the so so in the end it was not it was not the the the smoking lounge that in the hindenburg, of course, but the other the other reason for the the you know, the tragedy, the hindenburg, was that the zeppelin company had an amazing record safety through storms, through through all kinds of terrible conditions. they were the best that it was a like a perfect record. whereas the american and british dirigibles had many many and well-publicized disasters their own. so zeppelin seemed to be a really safe choice until it wasn't. but it's i think think of something else. so you think the the smoking that was permitted on world airplanes until the eighties

there was oxygen above there were less oxygen mask here, people smoking away. so i didn't think about that at the time. you know who thought about that at the time. so there were lots of absurd in life that when you when you look back, you say how how could people have this? but we were all that you know, that's you know, that's that's. are not here. yeah. it seems we're in a period where we have access to more information than any time in history yet it seems an unintended consequence of that is more people retreat to certainty about things. do you feel like each in your comments you know i'm not sure and it's it's hard to it's hard to say way or the other to study it maybe there are studies that show it but but you know i think you know, like looking back, i think for example at the, you know, the wars of religion in

france were incredible bloodshed. but but i think that people on the protestant side and people on the catholic side were really very of their positions and they were not about read the tracts of the, you know, the calvinists or the catholic devotional to get a better, better understood. and so i think we're probably today we're probably exaggerating how uniquely polarized are today. but that's an impression. you know, there may be for what you know, what you've just i just haven't found it. it was a great entertaining talk. thank you. and thank you for publishing with with the press. i have a question to make it sound like it's coming from left field. i'm a historian by training. and one of the things historians will often do, they're sitting around is, you know, talk counterfactuals. but i also often say, well, you can't really study counterfactuals and you've just shown you can have a field of

study, an unintended. so i wonder if i could you if you were to create a center that doesn't exist on counterfactual history. well, is there a utility in counterfactuals and i'm so glad i'm glad you asked the question because it's a very sad story for for for me and my family. my brother, who was active in that movement, died years ago. and it was it it was a shock for the people, the movement. it was it was obviously devastating. and for us, it was younger brother. and i've been thinking of writing something about that as, a memorial to let me say. but there has been some interest in the in the theory of of alternative history recently marxist course are absolutely dead set against. but there are other historians who are more open to it and. and there there if if you're interested i can give you some good references on that because as i said, i'm about to write it, but the the the thing that

to me is, is the like the the complication of alternative history is that when you do alternative, you assume that there is one switch and you throw the switch like alexander the great killed in this battle or that battle as he nearly did or peter the gets killed. i mean there are lots of things like that where we're really consequential people nearly died but but then what you find is not just a single rail going out from the switch but, then you find a whole switchyard you find a chaotic world of all kinds of other weird things that could happen and so the the that isn't to all just alternative history but the. you know the challenges to explore that in a really way. one example that i remember clearly is, you know what, if what if there had been no islam, what if the the movement had had

failed? what what would have happened in the near east and the of that book said that same conflicts between muslims and christians, between different sects of islam would have happened among the eastern churches in words that there was a there a structure of conflict in islam of factored into it. but without islam it that everybody would be living in harmony they be they would be fighting over different different religious ideas. i'm intrigued by your point that something that some technology that is safe or that is been perfected when the increases then it's liable to fail and.

that sounds like a recipe for being aware of that. i wonder if you could give us some examples if there's anything now that you see that is on the brink of that of disaster based, the fact that it's gotten to a scale or to a complexity that is beyond what it had been, what i think probably, you know, the last question about cryptocurrencies, i think probably create more risk than any other innovation that i can think of. partly because cryptocurrency is a really a form of gambling and instead the present administration seems to be treating them as the advocates say, as as the future of finance and and so it's it's really the the for example, the presence of cryptocurrencies and the

portfolios of major institutions of banks, maybe of of of of of government funds. and so what would started out as a as a speculative could become enmeshed in the and much more broadly in society. i'll give you an example of of from philadelphia of a of a of a craze that kind of fizzled out in itself in the early and the mid 1830s. there was a movement to cultivate a certain kind of mulberry bush on which you could grow silkworms. and the the idea that you could get rich, you know, making cultivating silkworms at home, there would be a great american industry instead of having to import silk from europe, europe or, asia. and you find often mulberry street or, you know, cities like

mulberry street in cities like dr. and to think that i saw it on mulberry street in many of those streets date from the time when people were mulberry bushes or trees as part of that in fact i was able in a library in philadelphia, i was able to read a book about that when i investigated it for why things bite back. so but that was something that that burned out and. the reason that burned out was that that cultivating silkworms requires a certain kind of highly people, women who were who had been taught by their mothers. and it was it's a very, very difficult thing. and america never really had the people to teach that skill or enough people who were devoted to devoted enough to to spend their time. however, there was another indirect result of that that i in right back and that is that there a noted astronomer named trouville who moved to boston. he published of the outstanding

atlas's astronomical atlas all time. but he thought that the solution america to develop its silk industry was an insect from europe called the gypsy moth. and he started to raise gypsy moths in the suburbs of boston and the about gypsy moth is that the because of their their habits it's very easy for gypsy to land on the wagons that were transporting goods throughout new england and so the growth of commerce spread gypsy moths you know throughout the east coast at least so that's to that's a good example of how one you know one craze can can but it can also lead to another craze that has many, many more serious consequences.

and for one more. yes. thank you. you've talked about what data and information information it looks like we're going through another revolution now, like biological, you know, where companies are doing genetic engineering. have you given any thought to what your comments might be if? you were giving this lecture 50 years from now about making like little mice look like wooly mammoths. well, another thing that those same companies are working on is longevity technology. so, you know, if they're if they're successful, maybe maybe i will. but meanwhile, you know, meanwhile, i say that the the the real frontier and genetic side seems to be the the use of

of not not simply changing the germline genes, but but but like hooking people up to larger systems with with with nano nanotechnology, know, nano robots that that go into the bloodstream. so so it's it things have really changed since the nineties when cloning and and and like genetic enhancement. i mean they're still there but they're less prominent. there's a by that that i've just i have a review and press kurzweil's book the singularity is nearer and if you want to see you know the latest thinking and that was abundantly documented it's his second book on the subject was you want to see the latest. it was published last year if you want to see the latest thinking on that, that's a really great place to start. kurzweil is is unlike some of the other silicon valley people,

he's really a major who is who has helped mankind and who's also trying to live forever himself. so that's you know, that's another side of the book. but i suggest that if you are curious more, it's going to appear in the summer issue. the my review essay will appear in the summer of the milken institute review. thank you. so thank you very much. thank you. thank, ed, thanks very much. beautiful talk to me, the greatest unintended unintended consequence is that mike tyson finally gets recognition as a outstanding american philosopher, does deservedly so. deservedly so. thank you thank you. thanks very much, everybody. thanks,good afternoon, ladies ad

gentlemen. welcome the intrepid museum. glad to see you all today. my name is david winters on, the executive vice president of the intrepid museum. thank you for joining us for this afternoon's very, very special event. we'll hear about the new book, the shelling, the intrepid, the incredible wartime voyage of the navy's iconic aircraft. this is my copy. i just bought it. how about a fascinating chapter, the story of the ship. and we are now all aboard and we're honored host montel williams in conversation about his book with coauthor david fisher. david fisher is, the author of over 100 books, including 28 new york t