The Crisis

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter examines how the effects of technology move from background noise to recognized crises. Disruption alone does not make a crisis; recognition requires interpretation. A situation becomes a crisis when it has interpretive alignment and is associated with triggering events. Visibility determines whether those consequences cut through ambient noise, shaped by magnitude, speed, emotion, and media amplification. Interpretive alignment captures whether events map onto familiar crisis scripts such as fraud, contagion, or invasion, which lower the cost of recognition. Triggering events—disclosures, scandals, or sudden shocks—often provide the tipping point that reframes latent risks as urgent problems. Some technologies, like financial systems, appear crisis-prone because they yield vivid, quantifiable failures, while others, like social media, may produce diffuse but destabilizing dynamics that lack clear interpretive frames. Ultimately, crises reflect social interpretation as much as technical impact, with recognition hinging on how disruptions are rendered visible, narratively framed, and politicized.</jats:p>