3.2 Education and Technology

What are the Issues?

Knowledge is power. If we want to democratise technology, and start the debate around how society determines which technologies are developed, which are supported, how they are regulated and whether some should be banned, we need to ensure that informed debate is a priori possible.

Leaving everything to the experts is not a solution. Their expertise always comes imbued with opinions and values, containing an implicit a view of society and how it should function – in other words, with a political view. Even if they deny it (especially if they deny it), the political views of technical experts should be viewed with normal democratic scepticism.

Decisions are never without value. But in order to be able to judge the values that are applied in decisions on technology, it is often necessary to understand, at least to a certain extent, the technology concerned.

Democratic debate assumes "Mündigkeit", and this is where education plays a key role. Education, not just of the young, but the elderly as well, who are sometimes lost amidst the new technologies emerging around them. And of the civil servants, who must frame and administer the political discussions around technology. How a problem is presented within a certain bureaucratic system is often key to the solutions that are deemed "possible".

Finally, we know there are serious issues of gender equality and representation in science and technology, and in the many government, quasi-government and private bodies that take key decisions in this area.

So the key issue is: how do we, as a society, promote and ensure the knowledge necessary for a proper democratic debate around technology?