The relationship between social and technical norms - On the question of whether digitalization has the potential to transform society

Whether digitalization carries the potential to transform society is a matter of debate. The question becomes accessible to empirical analysis if one takes into account the control of behavior. What is missing, however, is a differentiated socio-theoretical perspective with which different ways to control behavior can be captured precisely. The paper starts from the assumption that the control of behavior can be grasped on the basis of orientation towards norms and makes a proposal as to how technical and social norms can be distinguished in the social, factual and temporal dimension and which different modes of behavioral control correspond to them. The example of assistive traffic technologies is then used to demonstrate both the fruitfulness of the distinction between social and technical norms and the empirical questions that arise in this context.