Fukushima

a tsunami of technological order

José L. García

Helena Mateus Jerónimo

pp. 129-144

in: Helena Mateus Jerónimo, José L. García, Carl Mitcham (eds), Jacques Ellul and the technological society in the 21st century, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

Reflecting on the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, in Le Bluff technologique (1988: 109), Jacques Ellul reflected on the paradox of increased unpredictability linked to technological power defined in terms of efficiency. Modern technological progress brings with it the desire to control nature and tame chance by means of calculating rationality that reduces contingencies, yet contemporary technological society has increasingly been confronted with incalculable complexities and become vulnerable to unexpected threats. Far from disappearing, as modernity claimed, unpredictability has become endemic as a result of the prodigious multiplication and power of our means of action.

Cited authors

Ellul Jacques