It's not about technology

Joseph C. Pitt

pp. 445-454

in: Mariarosaria Taddeo (ed), Trust in technology, Knowledge, Technology & Policy 23, 2010.

Abstract

It is argued that the question "Can we trust technology?" is unanswerable because it is open-ended. Only questions about specific issues that can have specific answers should be entertained. It is further argued that the reason the question cannot be answered is that there is no such thing as Technology simpliciter. Fundamentally, the question comes down to trusting people and even then, the question has to be specific about trusting a person to do this or that.