Design Culture and Acceptable Risk

Technological design is usually considered as a process of stipulating target functions. Technological artifacts are, however, not determined entirely by the intent of the engineers who designed them: they unavoidably contain unpredictable and uncertain characters that transcend engineers’ intent, and they cannot be understood purely from a functionalist perspective. In aviation, for example, the smooth implementation of a flight is ensured by a system that includes pilots interacting with each other and with a suite of technological devices. Emphasizing the human aspect of technological designs, this article presents a theoretical framework that takes socio-cultural aspects of technology as the primary for a philosophical, ethical analysis. An analysis of the acceptability of risks shows that the reliability of a technology is determined by the reliability of the technological decisions, eventually the existence of a reliable technological culture. So the task of the ethics of risks is to provide ways to reform our technology culture.