riddle of technology

is the idea that every technology instigates an accident which is essential to its understanding. The invention of the railway was, for instance, also necessarily the invention of the train wreck.

The riddle of technology . . . is also the riddle fo the accident. I'll explain. In classic Aristotelian philosophy, substance is necessary and the accident is relative and contingent. At the moment, there's an inversion: the accident is becoming necessary and substance relative and contingent. Every technology produces, provokes, programs a specific accident. For example: when they invented the railroad, what did they invent' An object that allowed you to go fast, which allowed you to progress -a vision a la Jules Verne, positivism, evolutionism. But at the same time they invented the railway catastrophe . . . I believe that from now on, if we wish to continue with technology (and I don't think there will be a neolithic regression), we must think about both the substance and its accident -substance being both the object and its accident. The negative side of technology and speed was censored. (1983: 32).

riddle of technology, n.All

riddle of technology