Was the Unabomber correct about the horrors of technology combined with government?
■ Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, was rightly imprisoned for life in 1998 for sending bombs that maimed and killed three people and injured 23 more, from 1978 to 1992. No one can excuse his terrorism. Kaczynski’s ideas, however, described in a manifesto entitled, "Industrial Society and Its Future," cannot be dismissed, and are increasingly important as our society hurtles toward individual disempowerment at the hands of technology and political forces that erode autonomy. ■ “Industrial Society and its Future” was published on September 19, 1995 by The New York Times and The Washington Post, to comply with Kaczynski’s demand, in exchange for him stopping the bombings. Kaczynski, who is still alive, wrote that the increasing industrialization of America and the world, and our increasing reliance on technology, would end up short-circuiting the ability of human beings to think for themselves and act on their own ideas and abilities. ■ He saw the political “left” as embracing these technologies with special fervor, because they were in keeping with the “leftist” ideology that centralized power was the way to govern men. He saw these “leftists” as psychologically disordered—seeking to compensate for deep feelings of personal disempowerment by banding together and seeking extraordinary means of control in society. ■ Well, Kaczynski, while reprehensible for murdering and maiming people, was precisely correct in many of his ideas.