Collingridge Dilemma

The Collingridge dilemma is about unpredictability. It is about the fact that you cannot predict the future. This sounds rather pathetic for such a nice name. I mean, isn’t it obvious?

However, it is about unpredictability in the very narrow context of technology assessment or better the social control of technology. Nevertheless, we struggle hard to avoid future analogues of the atomic bomb.

Instead of sitting still, doing nothing but sitting, we carry on to do research to become faster than our problems, our destiny, faster than light: and this in the face of the Collingridge dilemma.

An old Austrian song about the new wave of motorcycling in the 1950ies states: “I don’t know where I am going to, but I’ll be the first one there.” That is the power of technoscientific innovation. And the scientists themselves are the best motorcyclists by adding: “We are just curious”.

In the Collingridge dilemma of everyday life we have our experiences and base our assumptions on them. Maybe that is the reason why we survive. The problem is that no two moments in time are the same, and so are the places.

We keep on struggling against this constant change and so we suffer.

Back to technology assessment: After two days at a TA conference in Vienna I am sure that we need some time to catch up with what already exists, instead of pushing the frontier further. But maybe we can never achieve this.

In a world without technology, the Collingridge dilemma is gone. But will we still be there?