The significance and the scope of the "inessentialism" in the philosophy of technology

技术哲学近期状况的主要特征之一是社会建构主义方法的流行。按照这种方法，技术的过程和产品不是严格地由“纯粹的”技术逻辑决定的，而是受各种社会影响而开放的，并“在解释上灵活”。另一方面，这种方法并没有导致社会决定论，而是一种“非决定论”或“非本质论”，认为技术的过程和产品是由多维因素决定的。这种方法的优点是使技术哲学建立在与各种实证研究的卓有成效的互动中，例如技术学的历史和社会学。但另一方面，也有人批评这种方法，认为太多的灵活性导致了对技术的政治后果的漠视，使哲学的传统角色变得不可能。针对这种批评，我试图证明“非本质主义”可以在技术哲学中发挥积极和批判的作用。非本质主义的主要观点是，技术现象从根本上是模棱两可的和矛盾的。无论一种设计看起来多么有利和确定，它都不可能是一个完美的设计，我们也不能消除失败的可能性。如果我们认真对待技术的这种“他者”特征，设计过程的主要目标必须是失败的可能性和对未知因素的认识，而不是对其有用性和确定性的追求。如此一来，根据非本质主义，设计原则和对技术的理解必须得到根本改变。

One of the main characteristics of the recent situation in the philosophy of technology is the popularity of the social constructivist approach. According to this approach, the process and product of technology are not strictly determined by the "pure" technological logic, but open to various social influences and "interpretatively flexible". On the other hand, this approach does not result in the social determinism, but rather in a kind of "indeterminism" or "inessentialism", according to which the process and product of technology are determined by multi-dimensional factors. This approach has a merit of making the philosophy of technology set in a fruitful interaction with various empirical investigations, such as history and sociology of tehcnology. But on the other hand, there is a criticism against this approach, according to which too much flexibility brings about the indifference to political consequences of technology and makes the traditional role of philosophy impossible. Against this criticism, I have tried to show that the "inessentialism" can play a positive and critical role in the philosophy of technology.The main point of the inessentialism is that technological phenomena is fundamentaly ambiguos and ambivalent. However advantageous and certain a design seems to be, it cannot be a perfect design, and we cannot eliminate a possibility of failure. If we take this "otherness" character of technology seriously, it is not the search for the usefulness and certainty but rather the possibility of failure and recognition of the unknown factors that must be the main target of the design process. In this way, according to the "inessentialism" the principle of design and the understanding of technology must be fundamentally changed.