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May 19, 2021 - 7:00am
Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, is still alive. He was a maths prodigy who abandoned academia in 1969. He moved to a remote cabin in the Montana woodlands, there to return to a more primitive life. In horror, he watched as his personal Eden was invaded by developers and tourists.
He began a terrorist campaign. Bombs, increasingly sophisticated, in parcels and letters that were sent to airline headquarters, university labs, computer stores. Three people were murdered, others were maimed. Like any academic he had big ideas and he wrote a manifesto — Industrial Society and Its Future. He posted it to newspaper editors: publish this or more people will die. In 1995 the Washington Post published the entire thing. Kaczynski’s brother recognised the tone, and the FBI found the Unabomber with his help.
The Unabomber, committed to eight life sentences, has become a pop cultural icon, in the way only infamous American killers can be. There have been movies and documentaries; the ideas of Industrial Society and Its Future have found a home among communities of anarchists, primitivists, neo-Luddites, and ecofascists.
Now the first extensive study of Kaczynski’s ideology has been undertaken by the University of Cambridge’s Sean Fleming. The study is full of revelations. Fleming demonstrates that Kaczynski’s ideas have been misunderstood by his green anarchist and neo-Luddite followers on the Left, and fans on the far-Right, like the Norwegian Anders Brevik and the fascist party Golden Dawn, which translated Industrial Society into Greek in 2018. According to Fleming:
Fleming argues that Kaczynski’s ideas are drawn from three well-known academics: French philosopher Jacques Ellul, British zoologist Desmond Morris, and American psychologist Martin Seligman. Industrial Society and Its Future makes the following arguments:
The spread of these ideas, for Fleming, makes Kaczynski more than another lone wolf terrorist. He has become “the leader of a pack”:
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SubscribeI barely remember who John Kaczynski was and have no idea who Sean Fleming is, but I have to say I agree with (1) and (2) notwithstanding that the ideas came from a psychopathic batso – indeed I have been banging this drum almost a decade to any who are willing to give my tedious ramblings a hearing (and not too many are tolerant, even of those who have the first clue what I’m waffling on about).
Certainly not read any Jacques Ellul or Martin Seligman, I did read The Naked Ape four decades ago and I don’t see that as an influence. What interests me though, is that totally disconnected people, including some randoms like me, reaching similar thoughts about the nature of technology – in my case not so much technology writ large but more specifically the nature of algorithms – but that stuff gets rather technical so UnHerd is probably not the place to discuss that.
On (3) I agree partially – the time of (3) is now, and the next couple of decades are going to be pretty catastrophic – in part because large scale technological unemployment is coming – but other reasons too, including advances in both algorithmic and genetic tech soon forcing us to confront questions about our nature we have been sweeping under the carpet. We can hope though things will improve beyond that, although it is a moot point who or what that ‘we’ will be by then.
I also think there is some truth to (5) but it’s an insignificance, although (4) is of course violent criminal madness. As to the green anarchists , neo-Luddites, primitivists, eco-fascists etc, there is no chance any of those will have any impact on the direction of humanity and its relationship with technology, no matter what acts of madness they commit. The numbers involved don’t matter even if the anti-tech movement becomes huge. It’s the American Indians vs the incoming Settlers -it’s a clash between low-tech and hi-tech – and that only ever has one outcome.
For me, ultimately, it boils down to this: technology will not alter to accommodate human societies; human societies and humans must decide either to alter themselves in reaction to fit around technological advance, or junk modernity and revert back to older models of human living (and accept this comes at the cost of a different form of oblivion). It’s a binary, there isn’t really a middle ground, no matter how much you may wish for it. As such, reversion is not really something I believe has any likelihood of happening.
You agree with (2), that we are “biologically and psychologically maladapted to life in a technological society,” but think reversion is unlikely, so we must alter ourselves to accommodate technology. In what ways?
I think some of that is already happening. Because of technology we now see ourselves in ways we never have before, and that creates feedback loops – humans eventually alter themselves in reaction when confronted with information, especially about themselves, and being altered then allows us to alter some more. For example I now work in ways totally different to 20 years ago, because I have instant access to facts and data (which I don’t need to memorise anymore), and access to other peoples ideas and suggestions to improve mine – it’s like having a somewhat whimsical enormously powerful personal djinn, but it cannot be denied that I’m fitting in around the way the djinn operates, and it’s then difficult to decide who is the master and who the slave.
And moreover, we are now on the verge of getting hitched pretty directly to technological and biotechnological systems so boundaries between us and algorithmic processors and human created wetware biotech will blur soon enough. I believe such tech is no more than a decade away.
This all stems from the fact that there is an impedance mismatch between biological systems (us) and electronic algorithmic processors we created (computing systems), which are many orders of magnitude faster. And as we can replicate much of human decision making on computers, it’s a one way street – you eventually get to the point where machine decisions first are indistinguishable from human ones, and then outdo humans – through sheer brute processing power if necessary, even if human thinking processes themselves cannot be fully replicated. The issue of ‘real intelligence’/sentience becomes an irrelevance if you cannot tell them apart from algorithmic decisions. For humanity the only route to survival is to incorporate the machines within us. All other routes lead to demise or zoodom. There are dangers of course, huge ones, but there isn’t really a choice.
I posted a detailed response but it has gone into ‘Awaiting for approval’. Perhaps the UnHerd algorithmic policeman is a sensitive soul and doesn’t want any more discussion on the topic.
Gunther Anders, the great German philosopher and an activist against the nuclear bomb, called our age of the 3d Industrial revolution “post-civilizational cannibalism”. Anti-technocracy is not “back to the woods”, it is not a return to savagery – on the contrary, technocracy is a culmination of Western savagery and ignorance. To fight technocracy, all is needed is true culture, true education, true philosophy, true Word, true intellect. Gunther Anders wrote in 1956, in his book The Obsolescence Of Man (which is as good as banned in the US or in English in general), providing a portrait of the technocratic terror: “In order to stifle any revolt in advance, one must not use violence. Methods like those used by Hitler are outdated. You need only develop such powerful collective conditioning that the very idea of revolt will not even cross people’s minds.
Ideally, individuals should be conditioned by limiting their innate biological abilities from birth. Then, we would continue the conditioning process by drastically reducing education in order to bring it back to a form of integration into the world of work. An uneducated individual has only a limited horizon of thought, and the more his thoughts are confined to mediocre concerns, the less he can rebel. Access to knowledge must be made increasingly difficult and elitist. The gulf between people and science must be widened. All subversive content must be removed from information intended for the general public.
Above all, there should be no philosophy. Here again, we must use persuasion and not direct violence: we will massively broadcast entertainment via television that always extols the virtues of the emotional and instinctive. We will fill people’s minds with what is futile and fun. It is good to prevent the mind from thinking through incessant music and chatter. Sexuality will be placed at the forefront of human interests. As a social tranquilliser, there is nothing better.
In general, we will make sure to banish seriousness from life, to deride anything that is highly valued and to constantly champion frivolity: so that the euphoria of advertising becomes the standard of human happiness and the model for freedom. Conditioning alone will thus produce such integration that the only fear – which must be maintained – will be that of being excluded from the system and therefore no longer able to access the conditions necessary for happiness.
The mass man produced in this way must be treated as what he is: a calf, and he must be kept a close eye on, as a herd should be. Anything that allays his lucidity is good socially, and anything that could awaken it must be ridiculed, stifled and fought. Any doctrine questioning the system must first be designated as subversive and terrorist, and those who support it must then be treated as such.”
I’m not convinced Kaczynski inspired anything. People are now acutely aware of the dangers of modern technology based on the internet and the huge power wielded by leading internet-based companies. They are also living with the widespread destruction of livelihoods by IT-based tech and automation. That’s what’s driving the reaction against much technology.
Kaczynski provides a rudimentary ideological framework for those who feel the need of such a thing to underpin their fight against tech, but I’m not sure it’s either necessary or a driving force of the movement. There are plenty of modern anti-techies who set forth their own simplistic, although fundamentally accurate, analysis of the dangers of big tech. These manifestos can be reduced to one or two pages and I think that’s all the manifesto most anti-techies need.
Those who intend to wage a campaign of violence against technology might do well to ponder Kaczynski’s fate. He is, indeed, still alive. For the past twenty years he’s been incarcerated in the federal supermax prison in Colorado, in more or less permanent solitary confinement.
Wow. This is an enormous eye-opener. Ted K is a modern day prophet/martyr. Hmmm.