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(2013) Jacques Ellul and the technological society in the 21st century, Dordrecht, Springer.
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.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-6658-7_10
Full citation:
Garcia, J.L. , Mateus Jerónimo, H. (2013)., Fukushima: a tsunami of technological order, in H. Mateus Jerónimo, J. L. Garcia & C. Mitcham (eds.), Jacques Ellul and the technological society in the 21st century, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 129-144.
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