Interdisciplinary Lecture Series: Failure and non-functioning in (digitized) societies.

Error. Broken. It doesn't work. The fact that digital technologies don't work is not just a phenomenon of spectacular accidents and technical disasters. As an unpleasant interruption, it is part of everyday experience.

Faulty technology, however, is by no means only a phenomenon of the modern age. But what characterizes our faulty, non-functioning societies today? How did people deal with technical errors in the early modern period? And in other cultures? When is something even considered an error? And isn't the technical error ultimately a human error after all?

The interdisciplinary lecture series will ask these and many other questions. Historical perspectives will be combined with questions about the communication of errors in contemporary societies as well as about strategies of technical sciences and societies to find, avoid or cope with errors.