Technisches Nichtwissen

Ignorance is a topical issue. People are widely discussing the existence of ignorant civilisations in the periods of second or reflexive modernity, agnotology as a new avenue of research, and wicked problems and their clumsy solutions. At the point where ignorance becomes inextricably lodged in the realm of what still needs to be learned due to an increase in complexity, ignorance challenges the so-called knowledge-based society as the obstacle to and flip side of knowledge. It is at this point that potential risks and dangers, which we know enough about to refute the claim that we are ignorant, reveal themselves. However, we will probably never be successful in convincingly refuting this claim.
Today, there is a tense relationship between the classical epistemological problem of ‘what we can know’ and the question of ‘what we must know’, which governs our information society. On the one hand, we must know as much as necessary in matters of security and health, but on the other hand we should know as little as possible when it comes to relaying information to technological systems or expert cultures in daily life, economics or science.
If lacking knowledge of science or how to take appropriate political action constitutes a flaw, then an ignorance of technology is both desirable and problematic at the same time. Some of those who consider technology to be a field of applied knowledge will regard that statement as an oxymoron, some will worry it reflects an aversion to technology which results from a lack of technological knowledge, and others will see in it the humility necessary to combat extravagant delusions of omnipotence, while their antagonists dream of machines which continue to exceed the bounds of plausibility and intellectual comprehension.