I though to myself, is Kaczynski really the poster-child of the view-point that technology can harm civilization? Surely there are thinkers in this area that did not blow up people.<p>In researching, I found that the Kaczynski was quoted by Kurzweil in The Age of Spiritual Machines, and then re-quoted by Bill Joy in this article - <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html</a> - interesting..<p>Are there more authoritative bodies of work in the realm of this point of view? It seems like a very important view for civilization to reconcile - without being flavored by the legacy of a serial killer.
I think the the dislike of technology is just the surface of the Unabomber's views. His more interesting view is that our world is incongruent with the environment we evolved to thrive in, which causes mental illnesses and insanity, and the general discontent we all feel. Technology is just 1 of many of those incongruencies. If you read his Manifesto, there's actually a lot of things that make sense, it's just that his ways of trying to instill change was kind of lame and ineffective.
A good part of the "hate" in America's love/hate affair with technology dates back to the horrors of World War II and the subsequent threat of imminent nuclear destruction.<p>Things just haven't been the same since the collapse of the USSR. Anyone born after ~1980 or so is not going to be able to relate with the mindset preceding this.
Kaczynski was arguably in part created by the worst aspects of the academia he attacked. It's worth reposting <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3234014" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3234014</a> which was posted on HN some time ago.