Discussion Paper 61, March 2010
Anatomy of a Disaster: Why Some Accidents Are Unavoidable John Downer This paper looks at the fateful 1988 fuselage failure of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 to suggest and illustrate a new perspective on the sociology of technological failure and the question of whether such failures are potentially avoidable. Drawing on core insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge, it highlights, and then challenges, a fundamental principle underlying our understanding of technological risk: the idea that ‘failures’ always connote ‘errors’ and are, in principle, foreseeable. From here, it suggests a new conceptual tool for Disaster Theory, by proposing a novel category of manmade calamity: what it calls the ‘Epistemic Accident’. It concludes by exploring the implications of Epistemic Accidents and sketching their relationship to broader issues concerning technology and society, and social theory’s approach to failure.
Discussion Paper 62, April 2010
The Libertarian Origins of Cybercrime: Unintended Side-Effects of a Political Utopia Jeanette Hofmann Cybercrime and its potential ramifications exemplify ‘one of those things that nobody wants’ (Popper 1963). From today's perspective it would have been easy to foresee and at least partly prevent the mischief of cybercrime. One therefore wonders what early developers and users of the Internet actually envisioned, and how malpractices such as spreading damaging viruses relate to these visions. This essay approaches this question by interpreting cybercrime as an unintended consequence of the utopian dreams that flourished during the early days of the Internet. In itself a highly innovative activity, cybercrime can be seen as an ironic counterpart to the expectations of an egalitarian cyberspace whose technical and social norms condemned discrimination against any type of applications and uses.
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