Technological change poses serious challenges to the idea of democratic self-governance of modern society. In recent decades, discussions on the relations between technology and democracy have intensified, especially when new basic technologies have been invented and its impacts became an issue on the public agenda (Goggin 1986, Sclove 1995). In the seventies and early eighties, most commentators worried about the undermining of democracy in a technological society and called upon the state to guarantee democratic control of technology. However, in analysing the capacity of the state and its bureaucratic apparatus to steer technology according to politically defined goals, political scientists became more and more sceptical. Given the rapid and fundamental changes in the societal conditions affecting state action, does the state still have the capacity to steer technological change effectively and efficiently? Most analysts concluded that the traditional model of steering technology through a hierarchical, centralised and bureaucratic democratic state was in serious trouble, both theoretically and practically (Grimmer et al. 1992, Martinsen/Simonis 1995).