Technology And Safety

Convenience, entertainment, and safety are the three categories into which all uses of technology in some way reduce down to.  Some uses of technology may fall into multiple categories, but all of them fall into at least one.  Safety, the latter, is one of the must unappreciated benefits of technology for some who have grown accustomed to it, but it is also one of the most overestimated benefits of technology for many of those who have not taken safety for granted.

Yes, electronic and more traditional technology (i.e., door locks) can make homes more secure, online information less susceptible to theft, and general crimes easier to prevent or solve.  However, these measures only provide varying degrees of safety, not an invulnerability to accidents, crime, and loss.  Anyone who expects absolute safety to be a gift bestowed by technology has an incomplete understanding of both technology and reason.

Technology cannot guarantee absolute safety because other technology can be used to counteract it--not to mention the fact that there are other epistemological reasons why technology is incapable of granting perfect safety.  For example, one cannot prove that an electrified fence, security camera, or lock will continue existing in the future.  As with all material objects, there is nothing more than probabilistic estimates that can be made about whether a given material object will even continue to exist from one moment to the next.

Of course, as previously noted, one does not have to consider hypothetically possible metaphysical illusions to realize that looking to technology for absolute safety from other humans is to seek what cannot be found.  There is always the possibility of the technology in question malfunctioning, being disabled by other people, or simply having its effectiveness intentionally sidestepped (without disabling) by the use of other technology.  Even on a "practical" level rather than a speculative metaphysical one, the safety of technology is limited at best.

Technology in all of its diverse manifestations can certainly increase the probability of one's safety in a given place or at a given time, but anything more is an epistemological impossibility.  A lack of absolute safety does not exclude degrees of high safety, yet a high degree of safety does not entail perfect, impenetrable safety.  Probability and proof can be quite distinct!  Nothing produced by science, no matter how novel or comparatively complex it is, can promise humans that which cannot be promised.