ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the expression 'high technology' and not 'large technology' to distinguish the subject matter from analyses, which, taking for example telephone networks or transport networks, seek to emphasize the network structure; for this is of little interest for the topic of risk. Technology is the making of an object or a state deviating from what nature would have brought forth itself. The fact that the subject of risk attracts so much attention nowadays — that even society itself is described as a society of risk — is attributable chiefly to rapid technological developments in fields under the scientific aegis of physics, chemistry, and biology. The problems of technology reveal themselves in the attempts to solve the problems of technology by technical means. The form of technology thus becomes a problem. It marks the boundary between enclosed and excluded causalities. In high technologies this form-defining boundary is apparently constantly violated, including what was excluded, creating unforeseen cross-linkages.
