NATS 1775 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Reductionism, Tacit Knowledge, Simple Explanation
30 Jun 2016
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One of the founders of the society for the history of technology (shot) Kranzberg"s laws 1: technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. Technical developments frequently have unintended consequences, i. e. , unforeseen environmental, social, and human ramifications that go far beyond the intended purpose of the technical devices and practices. The same technology can have different results in different contexts. Technology is not neutral: technologies do have meanings and consequences; their history is of great significance in human affairs. Technology is not good or bad in and of itself: to understand the meanings and consequences of any given technology we need a contextual approach. Kranzberg"s laws 2: invention is the mother of necessity. Every technical innovation requires additional technical advances in order to make it fully effective, most technological innovations are made to make other innovations work or work better. Often, a technical innovation creates a technological imbalance that requires other innovations to be fixed.
