随着生活世界的技术化,技术的安全问题越来越引起人们的关注。而在技术安全的问题上,公众与政府、专家的认知与判断往往不相一致。因此有必要对安全的概念进行深度反思。文章首先考察了技术安全的维度。认为技术安全包含三个维度,即客观维度、规范维度和主观维度。客观维度是可以描述或者通过实验检验的;规范维度体现了安全总是相对于一定的标准而言的;而主观维度则指涉安全作为经验感知和价值判断的内涵,即尽管认识对象是客观的,但是所有的描述和感知、判断都是和主体的经验、情感、教育以及文化和规范密切相关。此外,技术安全还和一定的文化语境相关。也就是说,技术安全具有文化依赖性,脱离了特定社会的技术发展水平、经济发展水平和人的安全意识讨论安全问题,显然是有缺陷的。文章最后指出,安全总是一个相对的概念,安全与人们对风险的可接受性相关。
Technology safety contains three dimensions: objective, normative and subjective dimensions. Objective dimension can be described by experiments; normative dimension means that safety is based on the technology standards; subjective safety refers to subject perception and value judgment, which relates to personal experiences, emotions, educations and norms. And technology safety is also closely related with particular culture context. In other words, it is not rational to discuss the safety issues without the consideration of developing level of science, technology and economic, and ignoring the public awareness of safety. Actually safety is generally a relative concept and associated with the risk acceptability of the public.