Thursday, December 07, 2023

the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become

--- Bruno Latour, in Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies (1999: 304), cited in Blackboxing, Wikipedia, accessed 7 December 2023

Wikipedia cite:

[Blackboxing is] the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become.