Ted Kaczynski, a terrorist and luddite, was captured when his brother David recognized his writing style in the manifesto "Industrial Society and Its Future". The manifesto was published by The Washington Post and The New York Times on September 19, 1995 under the promise that no further bombings would occur if it were published.
Some excerpts from the manifesto:
Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion.
Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race.
More news/facts on the Unabomber:
- Kevin Spacey will be doing in a drama centered around the Unabomber for the Discovery Channel.
- A portion of the manifesto was quoted in Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines.
- The Unabomber was promoted as a write-in candidate in the 1996 presidential election.
- A Freakonomics audio interview with Kaczynski.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @09:11AM
Truly not his brother's keeper. Might as well have murdered Ted himself. David Kaczynski is evil incarnate. May he burn forever in Hell.
Betrayal. It's what family is for.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @09:16AM
Stupid nigger editors, why doesn't the fucking summary say anything about the Power Process and how the Power Process can only be satisfied by communities of small groups?! I'm a small group! Me and my hand gonna jizz all over your site!! Now come over here and lick my screen clean bitch.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @10:07AM
Trolling is a surrogate activity. The Unabomber was right! Leftists have disrupted the power process, and the powerless have resorted to trolling.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @10:32AM
Based on the excepts from TFA/his manifesto above: Was he wrong?
Also: luddites should generally require an inability to understand technology and a refusal to accept it, rather than understanding the technology and its consequences and choosing to reject it.
While I don't like the top down leadership, the Amish seem to have a better method of working through it than America does, although their glacial rate of technology adoption would obviously never work for the world at large. More reflection should be given to the dangers of a technlogy and if it cannot be forestalled then it is the duty of individuals with knolwedge of it to see that it is distributed far and wide, so abuse of it will be evenly distributed rather than selectively and beneficially abused for only one corporation or nation's benefit.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @10:43AM
While I don't approve of his methods
Everyone says this. You don't approve of his methods, because you have something to lose. Because you're scared to share the cell next to him. Because you're chickenshit.
It's the same with all you rich people. You have your money. You're scared to death of losing it.
Witness the gansta rappers all rapping about violence, setting fires, beating bitches, and killing whitey. Witness how the same gansta rappers give interviews in which they denounce the very same violence that their music advocates. Because it's all about the money. They want to continue to get paid to be hypocrites.
Chickenshit.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday April 03 2016, @02:35PM
Chickenshit.
Says the AC...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @02:55PM
As if using the pseudonym "LoRdTAW" is effectively any less anonymous.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday April 03 2016, @09:24PM
I had LoRdTAW over for tea and biscuits just last week. I do assure you that he does go by it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @09:26PM
It takes guts to show the world your collection of plushies [pokeheroes.com].
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday April 04 2016, @05:51PM
Being able to see is comment history is effectively less anonymous.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Sunday April 03 2016, @09:42PM
Or far more likely, he/she genuinely feels that maiming and killing random people (e.g. whoever happened to open the package) isn't an effective or acceptable way to get the point across, especially for a decade or two before conveying the message in words.
My income is below the poverty line, yet IMNSHO the Unabomber's approach was repulsively unethical and cowardly. I can understand a person that's in a dangerous combat situation resorting to attacking from afar while hidden away so the victims can't protect themselves or retaliate, but doing it to people that were just going about their day is pathetically cowardly.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday April 04 2016, @01:19AM
Or, troll, it is because I don't condone killing people just because I don't like them.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @11:45AM
Also: luddites should generally require an inability to understand technology and a refusal to accept it, rather than understanding the technology and its consequences and choosing to reject it.
I think this is a key insight. I think many early adopters and main stream users have no idea how the technology they use works and also don't ponder on the implications of using it. Only dead fish go with the flow all the time.
Thanks for your good post, I agree with all you said.
(Score: 4, Informative) by deimtee on Sunday April 03 2016, @11:46AM
This is not correct. The original luddites had a very good understanding of the technology they opposed, and its consequences. At the time, the product of the machines, although far cheaper, was also inferior to the product of the craftsmen. They opposed not only the loss of jobs, but also the drop in quality.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @12:50PM
> Based on the excepts from TFA/his manifesto above: Was he wrong?
Yes, he was wrong.
His claim that 'individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations" has always been true. He was just comfortable with the way that power imbalance looked during the time he grew up. The topography of that imbalance is changing for both bad and good -- every smartphone video of police brutality, every wikileaks dump, etc are examples of technology enabling individuals and small groups.
Based on those excerpts he was operating in a bubble of ignorance, it wasn't that he was wrong about what he knew, it was that he was wrong about what he did not know. Like far many people he filled in the blanks of his ignorance with worst case scenarios and just assumed he was right about them.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday April 03 2016, @10:40AM
I have never actually read his, Kaczynski, manifesto. But from the given quotes it seems to still be fairly up to date and fitting in with current society and potential future social issues. Might actually be worth a read and considering his academic background it might actually be a lot more interesting and well written compared to other criminal/terrorist manifestos such as Solanas SCUM manifesto (it's only like 20 pages so it wasn't much of a read, still not worth the time nor the effort tho) or Breiviks 1500 page cut-n-paste fest which I'll pass on reading unless I would somehow be forced to.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @10:56AM
Oh you can read it, but don't you dare believe it.
Oversocialization which the manifesto warns about, has already happened, with the social media revolution. If you refuse to socialize, if you refuse to use social media in any form, you might as well kill yourself, because your life is already over. If you don't socialize, you will never find work, you will never find love, you will never find friends. You have no future. And you will die.
If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity.
This is happening right now. Human Resources has replaced Personnel absolutely everywhere. Human Resources only accept applicants who are already employed, doing the same work for which they are applying, otherwise applicants are not and will never be qualified. Education is irrelevant. Training is impossible. It's a race to 100% unemployment as employees retire, because the unemployed are not qualified for employment.
Don't believe any of it, because if you do, you will be a criminal terrorist.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @11:48AM
If you don't socialize, you will never find work, you will never find love, you will never find friends. You have no future. And you will die.
Teenage armchair nihilist tautological crypto-bollocks.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @12:03PM
ArmchairNihilist would be such a wonderful online handle :)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 04 2016, @02:54AM
Only way to win is not to play.
You are supposed to marry female children, not grown ass women.
>In the United States, as late as the 1880s most States set the minimum age at 10-12, (in Delaware it was 7 in 1895).[8] Inspired by the "Maiden Tribute" female reformers in the US initiated their own campaign[9] which petitioned legislators to raise the legal minimum age to at least 16, with the ultimate goal to raise the age to 18. The campaign was successful, with almost all states raising the minimum age to 16-18 years by 1920.
>Also: see: Deuteronomy chapter 22 verses 28-29, hebrew allows men to rape girl children and keep them: thus man + girl is obviously fine. Feminists are commanded to be killed as anyone enticing others to follow another ruler/judge/god is to be killed as-per Deuteronomy. It is wonderful when this happens from time to time: celebrate)
Also getting with a grown ass woman is probably adultery as she was probably another man's woman whom she sinfully left (women cannot leave the man) or you took from.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @03:18PM
Kaczinksi was a nutcase who had read a bunch of books, including Atlas Shrugged IIRC (which also happened to be a big work for John Gilmore and the cyperbpunks). He didn't have vision about where the technology was heading, any more than people today do, except that big changes are coming.
At just about any point in time during the past 300 years (at least), one could make a case for the Luddite view of the world. Yes, but sending anonymous mail bombs and writing a rambling discourse about the enemies of mankind is not a productive way to address those issues.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Sunday April 03 2016, @05:19PM
It was not meant as an endorsement of his actions. Even tho I don't agree with his methods, or I assume world view, what he writes might still be interesting and a worthwhile read.
That said someone that finds a deep and profound meaning from Atlas Shrugged, or anything from Rand, is as noted probably quite nuts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2016, @07:49PM
i heard it somewhair
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 03 2016, @09:37PM
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has three sources for that claim. One of them, an article in The Atlantic [theatlantic.com], is online.
(Score: 2) by legont on Sunday April 03 2016, @09:58PM
Yeah, that's how he probably came up with his main "technosphere" idea that we are not organisms any more but cells - parts of real players such as corporations.
Anyway, he is turning 74 on May 22 and in case one wants to send him a postcard the address is No. 04475-046, US Penitentiary—Max, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO 81226-8500
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Sunday April 03 2016, @08:08PM
Supermax conditions: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/inside-americas-toughest-federal-prison.html?_r=1 [nytimes.com]
Speaking as someone who is entirely on the side of his victims, this troubles me. That level of control should be reserved for the kind of people who murder prison guards.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 04 2016, @02:44AM
Be sure to check the comments section of each one:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/unabombers-anti-technology-manifesto-published-20-years-ago/?comments=1 [arstechnica.com]
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/06/25/was-unabomber-correct-about-horrors-technology-combined-with-government.html [foxnews.com]
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1488909.Harvard_and_the_Unabomber [goodreads.com]
http://www.amazon.com/United-States-America-Theodore-Kaczynski/dp/1893956016 [amazon.com]
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/225468.Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future [goodreads.com]