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Evaluating the Risks of Technological Evolutions

From Chernobyl onwards academicians leveled considerable criticism on the role of technology as it impacts and benefits human life. In what was one of the best-selling books on the sociology of risk, Ulrich Beck realized that accidents under some conditions were the result of an inadequate manipulation of technology. If modern society had been based on Fordist scale production, Chernobyl marked the turning-point of a new era where risk predominated. With this backdrop, Beck considers that post-modernity needs technology and risk in order for the capital to be replicated (Beck, 2006). Although, technological advances, in forms of computers, ITC, and devices, are aimed at making of this world a safer site to be, mitigating and controlling the risk, the fact is that somehow, it contributes to creating new risks, which go beyond the control of society. This pungent point of view was widely examined by sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists in the recent decades. Is technology and technological advance a threat or a benefit for humankind? Ecological concerns are perhaps a point where more vividly may be seen the paradox of technology appreciated. The goal of this chapter aims at exploring the connection between technology and risk. In doing so, the discussion between Sunstein and Giddens should be situated under the lens of scrutiny. While the former argues that fears are determined by cognitive shortcuts, the latter considers that risk seems to be a result of technology. Giddens is a detractor of confidence in technology, although he praises its benefits. Sunstein is convinced that risk is a product of human ignorance and inaccuracy in the decision making process. Two views, two alternatives are juxtaposed in a debate that has not been finished to date. The Sunstein-Giddens debate draws the boundaries of policy analysis within a world capitalist framework. That is, their debate stays safely within the ethos and assumptions of the currently prevailing political economic system that dominates the globe. Sunstein is a legal scholar and professor in the Law School the University of Chicago, He is part of the clique there that adheres to the socalled law and economics framework derived from the Chicago School of Economics. This Chicago School has been led by such world luminaries as Gary Becker, Milton Friedman, and others whose ideas owe much to the Austrian school of Frederick Hayek. They are anti-Marxist, antiKeynesian, and avowedly neoclassical. In practice their ideas formed the basis for the neoliberalism of Western hegemony in the late twentieth century. A hallmark of their thought and its legal and public policy applications is the central figure of the rational actor. The rational actor is a heuristic to allow various econometric formulae to have some reference to the real world. The rational actor is the homo economicus who always acts to ensure the greatest economic advantage to him or herself as an individual. All theories flow from this assumption which is markedly individualistic and assumes a kind of cognitive functioning rarely if ever found among real people. Maximiliano Korstanje University of Palermo, Argentina