Security Through Technology? Logic, Ambivalence and Paradoxes of Technologised Security

In: European Journal for Security Research

Abstract

The article presents key concepts, issues and empirical results from a social scientific examination of preliminary technologisation trends in the security sector. This examination largely takes the form of a critique which deals with the ambivalence, unintended effects and paradoxes of such processes. The causes and dynamics behind the preliminary technologisation of security arise not least from a reflection on the intrinsic vulnerability of liberal societies. Globally networked structures are addressed as a security problem. This recursive loop, that technologisation itself evokes sui generis uncertainties, also applies to security technology. The article systematically explores how security and insecurity are interwoven. It combines different technosociological perspectives as well as empirically examining significant dimensions and typical patterns of technological ambivalence. (1) Its starting point is the view of normative theory that technology always involves the materialization of expectations which give rise to specific follow-up actions and effects. (2) In a praxeological view the interesting fact is that security technology, despite such normative effects, still remains more or less open to context-specific adaptation. Differences in use, unintended and counterproductive effects are to be expected. (3) The concept of hybrid actors is drawn upon in considering the potential for new technology to profoundly transform security bodies and practices. (4) Based on the premise that technology provides a constitutive framework which lends stability, durability and specific formats to social processes and social forms in the first place, individual lines of thought can be conflated with the question of what power political and sociopolitical significance is to be found in the technologisation of security.