More Ted Pilled

Interesting piece in the Times today about the resilient popularity of Ted Kaczynski's manifesto of 1995 (The Strange Post Partisan Popularity of the Unabomber by Charles Homans) Ted's own take on Jacques Ellul's theory that "civilization had aquired a mind of its own" resonates today in so many ways it's scary. I'm thinking here of Nate Hagan's notion of the "superorganism" or in a Marxist sense, of the "greedy and self-enjoying,a-subjective system of which no one is realy or fully in control", that is the self-reproducing force called Capital. The Deep Green Resistance folks point to "industrial civilization", which falls in line with Ted's thinking as well. Or in the historical sense we could just say modernity, with its tight bond to technology. The Unabomber's cabin was moved from Lincoln Mt to FBI headquarters in Washington DC. The only remaining reason to visit Lincoln is the Sculpture Park located east of town. Then there is Artificial General Intelligence, the possibility of which which Ted hinted at as well. Definitely a "mind of its own" in a reductive yet still terrifying sense. Remember, Ted is prophesizing all this pre-internet, a time fewer and fewer of us even remember. People like him and Marshal Mc Luhan, Joseph Conrad, Allen Ginsberg and Hunter S Thompson - they had an often tortured gift for seeing where trends might lead. Few could have imagined a time when these new Tech Masters of the Universe would decide it is their perogative to control the state! And the direction Progress is willed to take our species. The pushback exists, but it is still on the fringes; the website Tech Won't save Us, Richard King's book Here Be Monsters are a couple of examples. Mostly we see acquiescence, the resigned acceptance of that which the technocrats tell us will be good for us. We are told it will lead to trillions in new wealth, to a better life for all. There are reasons to be skeptical. At least with medical research such as gene therapy and cloning and such there are people considering bioethics. With AI there is too much profit at stake. Like the sorcerer's apprentice, we are doomed to learn the hard way.