Der Sog des Neuen und der Schock des Alten

With the advent of modernity, technology became part of an overall societal wait for something new. The ‘novelty bias’ generally selects what we understand as our technical culture. As the technology historian David Edgerton describes in his book The Shock of the Old, it seems entirely appropriate for us to exhibit donkey carts and handcarts in ‘folkloric museums’, while we look at aeroplanes and automobiles in technology museums. But isn't the philosophy of technology itself increasingly caught up in the maelstrom of the new with focalisations like these? Do we need a new methodological approach to tame this novelty bias? In this edition of the Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie, we are taking a step back to think through the concepts, metaphors and forms of reflection with which technical change should be observed, recorded and understood.

With contributions by
Andreas Brenneis | Tim Eckes | Petra Gehring | Gabriele Gramelsberger | Rabea Kleymann | Clarissa Ai Ling Lee | Tobias Matzner | Viet Anh Nguyen Duc | Philip J. Nickel | Philipp Richter | Jan Cornelius Schmidt | Tim-Florian Steinbach | Stefanie Theuerkauf | Jörn Wiengarn | Tobias Wilke