Fehler, Irrtum und Unsicherheit (Ungewissheit) bei Messdaten und bei der Wechselwirkung von Mensch und Maschine

As long as the negative consequences of complex, large technological systems did not exceed the risk acceptance level of the relevant society (culture) there was no legal need, with respect to the involved responsibility, to distinguish accurately between the terms fault, error and uncertainty with respect to the measured data and the interface between man and machine. The possible large negative consequences, e.g. of many of the nuclear power plants in Eastern Europe, however, force us to go more into these details, especially as a first step for more (legal) self-protection of the engineers who are involved in such (high risk) systems. The more unacceptable the negative consequences of large technological systems get the more we have to minimize human and machine failures. This means on the one side to increase automatization and on the other side to guarantee human interaction/control possibilities. Automatization can reduce significantly human faults caused by the encounter of 'linear clocktime' which dominates the technological system and 'rhythmic human time'. Human 'overall' control must be guaranteed to minimize the negative consequences of machine failures. Man can recognize and deal with complex patterns faster than computer, which might detect due to the inavoidable uncertainties in the measured data - the magnitued of the actual problem too late. The necessary discussion and the necessary synergetic combination of these two opposite trends is hindered by a fact which might be denoted: 'the responsibility of the computer'. (Can a computer bear responsibility and if not who does it?) Therefore the formation of a larger, 'healthy' (scientifical-technical) middle class is neede, especially for an increase of the ('technological') security in the (highly) industrialized nations. Healthy stands in this context for a synergetic combination of (scientific-technical) knowledge, self-understanding, motivation and engagement. It is hoped that this presentation stimulates the necessary discussions in the just mentioned directions. (orig.)SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman