A few years ago, two San Francisco doctors, Mary Mercer and Christopher Peabody, persuaded the busy hospital where they worked to conduct an experiment. They replaced their clunky and inflexible old pagers with a cheaper, more flexible and more powerful system. It’s called WhatsApp.
As the podcast Planet Money reported last year, the pilot was not a success. The chief reason? Messaging became too easy. To interrupt a busy consultant by paging them to demand a return phone call was a serious step, taken with care. But with WhatsApp, why not snap a photograph or even a video message and zip it over just to get a spot of advice? Doctors were soon swamped.
To students of energy economics, this story sounds awfully familiar. It’s the Jevons paradox.