The History of Technology as Experiment and Tragedy

This editorial proposes a conceptual clarification of what it may mean to speak of tragedy in relation to the history of technology. Rather than treating the tragic as a loosely evaluative label for catastrophic events, it reconstructs tragedy as a structured constellation centered on rational action under conditions of epistemic limitation. Against this background, the editorial contrasts two influential interpretive frames for understanding technological change: the experimental and the tragic. The experimental frame, prominent in twentieth-century risk analysis and technology assessment, interprets the history of technology as a learning process that generates knowledge through feedback from real-world experience and promises prospective intervention and control. The tragic frame, by contrast, foregrounds irreversibility, responsibility, and the loss of prospective agency, thereby questioning the assumption that historical experience functions as a reliable epistemic resource. The editorial argues that neither frame is sufficient on its own. While the experimental perspective risks cynicism toward victims and blindness to irreversible loss, the tragic perspective, taken in isolation, tends toward fatalism and political paralysis. The central claim is therefore not one of replacement but of complementarity.