The Pro-Actionary Principle →
… contrary to the Precautionary Principle, a technology can never be declared “proven safe.” It must be continuously tested with constant vigilance since it is constantly being re-engineered by users and the co-evolutionary environment it inhabits. The automobile today embedded in its matrix of superhighways, drive-ins, seat belts, gps, hypermiling is a different technology that the model T one hundred years ago. And most of those differences are due to secondary inventions rather than the internal combustion engine. In the same way Aspirin today, put into the context of other drugs in the body, changes in our longevity, pill-popping habits, cheapness, etc., is a different technology than either the folk medicines derived from the essence of willow bark, or the first synthesized version brought out by Bayer 100 years ago, even though they are all the same chemical, acetylsalicylic acid. Technologies shift as they thrive. They are remade as they are used. They unleash second and third order consequences as they disseminate. And almost always, they exert completely unpredicted effects as they near ubiquity.
