Books this year: a book diary

I was sick of the RSS, all out of internets, desperate to find something new, and I did a Google search for a whole lot of things I’m interested in, hoping to find some blog or news article that dealt with them all. I searched for something like “Ron Paul Singularity Esperanto Star Trek Topo Chico.” It wasn’t exactly those words, but it was similar. I found Industrial Society and its Future, which is commonly referred to as “The Unabomber Manifesto”. I got a copy for my kindle, and read the thing in two bewildered days.

The book is amazing. Kaczynski says: (1) Man has been warped by civilization, and is generally less happy than his primitive forebearers (agreed), (2) most careers and modern obsessions are surrogates for the things that we were really made to do (agreed), (3) liberals and conservatives are both wrong, and we need to tear the whole system down (agreed), (4) there is a time coming, 40 to 100 years from now, when we will become something post-human (agreed), and (5) because a compromise between our technological civilization and human dignity and freedom cannot be reached, there must be a revolution, now, before it’s too late, and we must intentionally force another dark ages (disagreed).

This last belief (apparently) is what led Kaczynski to start murdering advertising and computer science people. I can’t help but think I could talk him out of it. I wonder if this he’d write me back if I wrote to him in prison.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 16th, 2010 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Books read by Kenneth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.