Kevin Kelly argues that the Unabomber was right about some things. He starts by summarizing the Manifesto:
- Personal freedoms are constrained by society, as they must be.
- The stronger that technology makes society, the less freedoms.
- Technology destroys nature, which strengthens technology further.
- This ratchet of technological self-amplification is stronger than politics.
- Any attempt to use technology or politics to tame the system only strengthens it.
- Therefore technological civilization must be destroyed, rather than reformed.
- Since it cannot be destroyed by tech or politics, humans must push industrial society towards its inevitable end of self-collapse.
- Then pounce on it when it is down and kill it before it rises again.
Here’s where the Unabomber got it right and wrong:
The ultimate problem is that the paradise the Kaczynski is offering, the solution to civilization so to speak, is the tiny, smoky, dingy, smelly wooden prison cell that absolutely nobody else wants to dwell in. It is a paradise billions are fleeing from. Civilization has its problems but in almost every way it is better than the Unabomber’s shack.The Unabomber is right that technology is a holistic, self-perpetuating machine. He is wrong to bomb it for many reasons, not the least is that the machine of civilization offers us more actual freedoms than the alternative. There is a cost to run this machine, a cost we are only beginning to reckon with, but so far the gains from this ever enlarging technium outweigh the alternative of no machine at all.