Undo

I read that faster and more efficient brakes get some people to be worse drivers since they can stop faster.  Somebody said that the way to get people to drive carefully is to mount a strong and razor-sharp bayonet in the middle of the steering wheel aimed right at the driver's chest.  Any wrong move might then result in being impaled.

I doubt that is an innovation that will be adopted but I do think that people have a tendency to find the limits of a situation and work at those limits.  In fact, I just learned the other day that finding that a technical innovation, such as better brakes or better steering, has lead to worse behavior has a name, the Peltzman effect.  The University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman is the thinker referred to.

One of the interesting things about modern computers is the "Undo" command.  Take an action such as turning the text red and then Undo if you don't want that after all.  Some software can not only undo what was just done, it can undo what was just done before that last action as well.  The typical symbol for an Undo key is a curved arrow to the left, more or less symbolizing going back in time to where we were before.  I like to be able to Undo something I did by mistake but the ability to use that power may lead me to make more errors or be more careless in my work than when there is no Undo.  On a PC keyboard, the command "Control-Z" will cause an Undo to be executed.  People who are used to having that ability can be upset by using pencils or pens, which don't have an Undo function.  You can buy rubber erasers with "Control-Z" written on them to do an Undo an old-fashioned way.

A long time ago, the ancient writer Lucretius described rich people commanding their chariot driver to them out to their country home, only to decide upon arrival that they had changed their minds.  They had their driver take them back to the city.  I suspect that when we complete the development of tesseracting as explained by Madeleine L'Engle in A Wrinkle in Time and we really can "jump" instantaneously from here to there, we will spend lots of time undoing and jumping right back again.