Failure as a Constant in Technological Development

We posit that the proportional dimension of failure represents a constant within the heuristics of inventing, engineering, experimenting etc. These are attempts with an open result. “Trial and error” did not first become a “normal” heuristic in web design; this approach is fundamental to what we call technology. According to Latour, technological development should always be understood as a detour: an actor notices that he cannot achieve his intentions using existing means, and thus he makes us of an agent (a stick, a computer keyboard etc.). First he must get his “helpers” to do exactly what he wants them to, and consequently he externalizes a part of his capacity to act. A process of coordination occurs between the actor’s intention and the agent, and this process comprises a host of contingencies. When this “coordination” is successful, the technological artifact becomes a sort of “delegate” of the developer’s intention (Latour, 2000).

In the postindustrial age, technological development is no longer conceived of as a quasi manual process of coordination between an inventor and a nonhuman agent: now we find huge networks of actors and agents on both sides, but this should still not seduce us into lapsing into deterministic conceptions of technological development. Instead, doing justice to this increased complexity without lapsing into an apocalyptic risk discourse of the sort promoted by Hollywood films like The Matrix (1999 et al) is one of the greatest challenges facing technological processes and technology research.

Technological sociology posits a similar conception: the incremental “closure” of technologies. While a relatively open set of intentions, interests and technical possibilities exists at the beginning of a developmental process, it solidifies with time into a specific technology (sociology prefers to speak of sociotechnological systems) that only leaves open very precisely defined options for use, distribution and further development. An example is provided by the internet, which developed from a relatively open technology based on “rough consensus” standards into the form it has today (which most people only know as “Internet Explorer”).