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Unabomber Captured 20 Years ago Today

Accepted submission by Anonymous Coward at 2016-04-02 11:04:42
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Ted Kaczynski [wikipedia.org], a terrorist and luddite, was captured when his brother David recognized his writing style in the manifesto "Industrial Society and Its Future [wildism.org]". The manifesto was published by the Washington Post and New York Times on September 19, 1995 under the promise that no further bombings would occur if it was 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 [variety.com].
A portion of the manifesto was quoted in Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines [goodreads.com].
The Unabomber was promoted as a write-in candidate in the 1996 presidential election [wikipedia.org].
A Freakonomics audio interview [freakonomics.com] with Kaczynski.


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