II grew up in the country where cars were invented. The roads and cars here seem safe, or at least everything is done to make them safe. The accident is anticipated, the risk is calculated, possible collisions are calculated and the damage is minimized through modular design, so they say. We want to be prepared for everything here.
This logic of hedging, risk calculation and prevention is why I want to leave this country again. There is no room for the unexpected; this is only staged in high culture. But it would be much easier to open up to the unpredictable. To give room to improvisation, to allow the unpredictable and the unseen. Experience certainly teaches us this. We learn from accidents to build in such a way that it will be less bad the next time, and if we don't do this, then lawyers are waiting to sue: I sit in a technically highly complex device, and if something happens, I first ask the designer whether he/she could not have known this beforehand and who is to blame.
After all, machines are there to make work easier or to expand our senses. But here they are embedded in the social sphere and negotiated as such. Technology and its interaction dominate the discourse.
It is refreshing to see that in many parts of the world, technology is simply technology. It is accepted in its imperfection. It is sometimes smilingly called fate.
- make do -
