SOCA02H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 22: Nikolai Kondratiev, Ulrich Beck, Thomas Edison
Document Summary
Technology: defined as the application of scientific principles to the improvement of human life. Technological advances are not always beneficial, and rather can be disastrous: gas leak at union carbide pesticide plant in bhopal, india, killed about 4,000 people and injured 30,000, no. Technology has also been a detriment of people as we become more efficient in the ability to take life (e. g. , nuclear weapons, unmanned aircraft, etc) Charles perrow: referred to these events as normal accidents : normal (natural) accidents: accidents that occur inevitably though unpredictably because of the very complexity of modern technologies (e. g. , when your computer crashes, its considered a normal accident) Complexity can mean multiple moving parts or pieces that are dependent on one another and may not react in expected ways, or adding code to an already present program. Impossible to test for all possibilities and redundancies. Increased risk is due to a combination of both technological accidents and environmental threats.
