His failure to control his automaton with automatic regularity

 At a certain stage of technological progress, the individual begins to become aware that he has entered a danger zone. Gradually the smug satisfaction which the observer derived from the sight of some marvelous piece of machinery gets mingled with a sense of impending danger; fear befalls him. Those weavers who in a burst of blind and thoughtless hatred destroyed the power looms that had deprived them of their livelihood were not yet aware of the real menace. They tried to stop technical progress by brute force a fruitless attempt to save themselves from proletarization. The realization that man has to pay a price for every increase in power the machine gives him, that he must give an equivalent in return, is a realization that had not yet dawned in the early days of technology. In those days boundless economic confidence predominated, an unshakable optimism about the future. It is by no means accidental that the progress of the iron age was accompanied by doctrines in which progress undertook to celebrate itself, doctrines ranging all the way from praise of evolution to praise of brute force. The machine era is revolutionary not only as regards machinery.

As technology approaches perfection, however, the chorus of optimistic voices grows weaker, because experience gradually teaches not only the advantages but also the disadvantages which the new tools bring. Only by experience do we learn that our technological apparatus has its own laws, and that we must be on our guard against getting in conflict with them.

The industrial accident may serve here as an illustration. As mechanization progresses, industrial and traffic accidents increase until they far exceed even the casualties of war. Since even the most ingenious inventions cannot eliminate these accidents, it is clear that they must be due to some basic discrepancy between the operator and the mechanism he operates. The operational accident occurs where man fails to function as a human machine, where he no longer acts in accord with the automatic mechanism he is operating. The operational accident, in other words, occurs precisely where we are human, where we try to assert our independence of the machine, be it by lack of attention, fatigue, sleep, or preoccupation with non-mechanical things. It is in such moments of human weakness that the suppressed elemental forces break loose, get out of control, and wreak their vengeance by destroying both the operator and his machine. The law, now in the service of the technical organization, punishes the negligent operator for his failure to control his automaton with automatic regularity.

The disaster of the Titanic, an event whose symbolic significance is emphasized by the name, was such an operational accident. We can understand the shock it produced if we consider that this accident shattered for a moment faith in the technology which had claimed this ship to be unsinkable. The optimism based on such claims was temporarily dispelled.

The deeper and more lasting impression made upon man's mind by the Lisbon earthquake is, however, related to a change in religious concepts. It undermined the faith in Divine Providence, a shake-up which favored the formation of a causalist ideology opposed to any idea of divine providence.

From: Friedrich Georg Jünger - The Failure of Technology