A tension between double nature of any technology and vulnerability

Pestre (2009) asserts that “there is always a double nature of any technology” in his talk titled “Technology and Society: Know Your History”, presented in Lift Conference a year ago. Why does any technology have double nature? His assertion was made based on the history of technology. In the history, he observed that with new technology and innovation, new products were created and introduced into the market. When new products were introduced, it was not known immediately the very negative and very positive sides of it. There is a certain amount of time required to test the product in the market and find out its negative or positive impacts on us. Thus it was evident that there was a time delay between innovation of new technology and knowing the positive and negative impacts. Based on Pestre’s assertion, there are two implications that I would like to make.

First, what I could imply from his assertion is that we are vulnerable to technology and innovation. Vulnerability is defined as “idea of any susceptibility to damage or harm” (Eakin and Luers 2006, 366), but there is no generally-agreed definition (Gallopon 2006). Any product that we produce, create, and innovate, there is always susceptibility to damage or harm to us. Why? We do not know pros and corns of the product at the beginning. During the testing and trials of the products in the market, there is always possibility that we are subject to damage or harm. For example, plastic bottles were introduced to the market long ago without knowing the negative sides. After having used them for decades, we found out that how vulnerable of human are to the plastic bottle. CNN (2011) reported that the clear hard plastic bottle widely used as drinking water container contains deadly agent called bisphenol-A (BPA) which causes increase in risk of “birth defects, early puberty, obesity, brain damage, some forms of cancer, reduce in sperm-count and semen related diseases.” Now we are in the state of switching plastic bottles to other types of containers and modification of plastic materials in order to reduce or get rid of BPA.

Second, what I could also imply from the assertion is that there is a cost that we have to bare for technology and innovation. The cost can be very high and expensive if the products came out as more “harm” than “use” to people. For example, the nuclear technology and testing in the past history showed that there were tactile effects on experience of everyday life (Masco 2006). “Every person on the planet now receives a certain amount of radiation each day produced by the cumulative effects of amount of radiation each day produced by the cumulative effects of above-ground nuclear weapons tests and radioactive releases from within the global nuclear complex (Masco 2006, 26).” This can be a case of paying costs for new technology innovation.

In short, the tension between the double nature of technology and vulnerability can be high if the governance of the technology goes weak and the price to pay for the very negative side of the product will become high.

References

CNN. BPA may reduce sperm count. CNN News Network . 2011. 1-31-2011.

Eakin, H. and A.L. Luers. 2006. Assessing the Vulnerability of Social-Environmental Systems. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 31(1):365-394.

Gallopon, G.C. 2006. Linkages between vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity. Global Environmental Change 16(3):293-303.

Masco, J. 2006. The nuclear borderlands: the Manhattan Project in post-Cold War New Mexico. Princeton University Press: Princeton, N.J.

Pestre, D. Technology and Society: Know your History. Lift Conference. 2009.