Study On Technology Safety From STS Perspective

The hazard and risk of technology result in the tension relationship between technology and human health, living condition and environmental safety. The safety issues as public issues have increasingly received much attention. How to deal with the dispute about technology safety, high uncertainty and complexity of technology safety has become an important issue. This dissertation tries to discuss the different dimensions and factors of technology safety, the uncertainty of technology safety, the cognitive model divergence between expert and public and the construction of technology safety concept based on the interaction relationship between science, technology and society from STS perspective. Furthermore, the dissertation discusses the possibility and ways of the establishing technology safety soft law.The dissertation claims technology safety has two meaning:subjective safety and objective safety, based on the etymological analysis of safety. Objective safety means there is no threat to the value obtained; subjective safety means there is no attack fear. Objective safety can be measured by the parameters of behavior and condition; subjective safety is based on the feelings of people. Furthermore, the dissertation defines the meaning of technology safety from the concept of risk, acceptable risk and uncertainty. Then the dissertation indicates the concept of technology safety has four dimensions:factual safety which is described in terms of probability calculation and empirical validation; perceptual dimension which inherently contains values of different people and groups influenced by social culture; normative safety which is technical specification, social norm and the cognitive paradigm; intersubjective safety which refers to that technology safety is a concept of fact and value integration, and can be used descriptively or normatively.From "the fire of Prometheus" to "the flawed animal", technology, in some sense, can meet the human safety and survival needs. Technology shows the direct production process of life and active function of nature in essence under the push of safety needs. As "unfinished animals", humans holding the characteristics of "face to open world", "lonely and fragility", "the poor instinct" cannot adapt to the environmental "clearance". Therefore, humans must create technology in order to construct the second lifeworld to make up for the uncertainty and non-specific instinct of human beings. The traditional technology with features of substitutability, enhancement and labor-saving can meet the safety needs and provide stability. Also, the traditional technology can stabilize the rythem of the world and provide self-definition for humans by smoothing the irregular world.Compared with traditional technology driven by safety needs, modern technology is driven by a variety of social needs created. Modern technology is becoming more and more far away from the lifeworld. In other words, modem technology pursues "false need" instead of meeting the basic needs, in order to meet specific social, political, economic and military goals and interests. Modern technology no longer establishes the model and the characterization of the world, but creates flexible, robust, and situational and embodiment systems. Thus, modern technology as "enframing" is nonlinear, complex and controlling, which unmasks human society and natural society. Furthermore, modern technology results in unpredictable, uncontrolled hazard and risk and the transformation and expansion of hazard, which lead to survivability crisis and technophobia.The characteristics of modern technology lead to the uncertainty and complexity of technology safety. The uncertainty and complexity of technology safety mainly include:the interpretability of safety facts, the relativity of safety standards, the variability of safety perception, the incommensurability value, and the vulnerability of expert system and confidence crisis. Technology safety is a complex concept affected by many factors. First, technology safety is based on the theoretical model and model extrapolation in the laboratories under the influence of social culture. Second, technology safety as norm inherently has certain value associated with the level of technology development and economic development. Third, technology safety is not only a scientific concept, but also an ideological concept affected by safety awareness and safety culture. In practice, absolute technology safety cannot be obtained and safety is usually considered as the acceptable risk by different stakeholders.This dissertation analyzes the modernity feature and internal conflicts of technology safety by taking nanotechnology as an example. That is, on one hand technology can greatly enhance the social, national and public safety; on the other hand, technology can also undermine and threaten public safety. Technology, as the combination of angel and devil, makes the pubic and expert hold different safety cognition and understanding. Traditionally, the interpretation of the safety cognitive differences between the public and expert has three theoretical paradigms including the deficit model, the knowledge gap model and cognitive miser model. These three models holding the common hypothesis that science is universal and effective and that public knowledge is valid, cannot well explain the cognitive difference.This dissertation attempts to analyze the different understanding of safety between the public and expert from the perspective of STS and the hermeneutic perspective. The public as the technology user is intuitive toxicologist who understands safety from social cognitive paradigm and the expert as the technology creator is professional toxicologist who understands safety from scientific explanation model. The public considers technology is uncertain and cannot be controlled, experts believe that technology can be controlled. The public usually describes and explains safety in terms of experience and experts often explain safety in the calculation model. Based on the analysis of the cognitive difference, the paper furtherly analyzes the safety concept of the public contain the knowledge, experience and trust framework, holding the subjective worldview. However, the safety concept of expert is not entirely objective in that safety factor has subjective probability, safety model has virtual characterization, risk model has simplification and safety model contains value.Finally, this dissertation thinks that too much emphasis on the position of the public or expert is not appropriate. Combining the two visions and horizons can deal with the differences. Since the public understanding and the expert understanding are both crucial, how to let the public and expert jointly involve in technology safety assessment and management is a key issue. This dissertation then presents a new way of Nano-safety soft law. Compared to traditional hard law, the safety soft law has special advantages. First, the soft law can avoid the disadvantage of hard law under the scientific uncertainty. Second, the soft law has certain practical operation which the general precautionary principle does not have. The soft law can provide guidance and make a foundation for the hard law in the future and make the stakeholders conform to the guidance. The establishment of technology safety soft law needs the upstream engagement of the public, the common efforts of humanities and social science researchers and scientific researchers and the corporate voluntary safety management programs.