ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide the deplorable gap between the engineering and the social sciences and to contribute to the development of the methods of technology assessment and technology evaluation. Cultures are long-lived phenomena which are passed on through socialisation; that is, congruence of action is achieved through congruent socialisation. But, because of their immanent logic, individualistic cultures are characterised by only weak efforts at socialisation, which endangers the very existence of their structure of interaction structure. Bernstein discerns two language types which he relates to Durkheim’s distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity. The first type is cultivated in an environment in which all speakers have access to the same fundamental assumptions and share them. The second form of language, which Bernstein terms formal language, develops where consensus is scarce. The work machine forms the basis of the socio-technical system, that is of a method and its implementation, which replaces the social component and permits cooperation without interaction.
