One of the most frequently cited technology historians, Professor Melvin Kranzberg, was a major proponent of the law of unintended consequences. So much becomes obvious in his original 1986 paper, at the point where he expands on how he coined the first of his own Laws of Technology. "I mean that technology's interaction with the social ecology is such that technical developments frequently have environmental, social and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purpose of the technical devices and practices themselves, and the same technology can have quite different results when introduced into different contexts or under different circumstances." Going further, Kranzberg observed that many technology-related problems arise when "apparently benign" technologies are introduced at scale. Kranzberg died in 1995 and, for him in his time, an example of this phenomenon was DDT – in one context, a pesticide with dangerous side effects; in another, an important weapon to curb the spread of malaria.

There are many perspectives from which Thinking, Fast and Slow can be analysed. But one of the questions that I believe will have the most significance in our lives is that of the relations we can derive from our way of thinking and the design of algorithms for systems of Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning. For instance, we know that human beings are biased in many ways -- even in ways that we are not necessarily aware of. People tend to think that technology can provide a viable path to making unbiased decisions, but the reality is that computers are not exempt from the biases of the people who created them. Algorithms are already being used to make many major decisions about our lives such as who is hired for a job, who gets a loan from a bank, and even who gets arrested and for how long.

Escherichia coli, the bacterium that was the focus of the MIT/Harvard project. Photograph: Bsip Sa/Alamy One of the seminal texts for anyone interested in technology and society is Melvin Kranzberg's Six Laws of Technology, the first of which says that "technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral". By this, Kranzberg meant that technology's interaction with society is such "that technical developments frequently have environmental, social and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves, and the same technology can have quite different results when introduced into different contexts or under different circumstances". The saloon-bar version of this is that "technology is both good and bad; it all depends on how it's used" – a tactic that tech evangelists regularly deploy as a way of stopping the conversation. So a better way of using Kranzberg's law is to ask a simple Latin question: Cui bono?

One of the seminal texts for anyone interested in technology and society is Melvin Kranzberg's Six Laws of Technology, the first of which says that "technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral". By this, Kranzberg meant that technology's interaction with society is such "that technical developments frequently have environmental, social and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves, and the same technology can have quite different results when introduced into different contexts or under different circumstances". The saloon-bar version of this is that "technology is both good and bad; it all depends on how it's used" – a tactic that tech evangelists regularly deploy as a way of stopping the conversation. So a better way of using Kranzberg's law is to ask a simple Latin question: Cui bono? With any general-purpose technology – which is what the internet has become – the answer is going to be complicated: various groups, societies, sectors, maybe even continents – win and lose, so in the end the question comes down to: who benefits most?