Ted Kaczynski was accepted to Harvard University back in the day when entry was determined by academic achievement and test scores, not equity or affirmative action... his degrees were earned, not bestowed. He received a PhD in mathematics, specifically "complex analysis" and "geometric function theory." That was 56 years ago.
Today, not many people know much about Ted Kaczynski; few members of latter-day generations would even recognize his name, although they might have heard about him by another... the "Unabomber."
Over the course of 17 years, beginning in 1978, Ted Kaczynski mailed a total of 16 letter bombs, most of which were addressed to business leaders and college professors. Only two were discovered and defused, the rest detonated, killing 3 and wounding 23. He perpetrated these ill deeds from a cabin in the mountains of Montana... Ted Kaczynski was a recluse, he'd detached himself from society.
Why? Because he believed advancing technology would one day supplant humans, that the ensuing surveillance state would put an end to personal privacy... Ted Kaczynski feared the government would employ ever more sophisticated technology to gain power and control over all aspects of a person's life.
In the mid-90s, as his packages were exploding from coast to coast... one aboard a passenger airliner, Ted Kaczynski was also writing his "Manifesto," a 35 thousand word treatise entitled “Industrial Society and its Future,” in which he recorded detailed explanations of his beliefs and fears. At the time, there was barely an internet; flip phones were the apex devices, laptops were rudimentary. dial-up modems were required for computers which used "floppy discs." In 1995, very few Americans could envision the communication and connectivity technologies of 2023; everyone thought Ted Kaczynski was crazy... and he was, but...
The communication and connectivity technologies of today are exactly what Ted Kaczynski feared; the capacity exists to track your every move. "Smart" phones, televisions, appliances, cars, and, amongst so many other things, an ever-ready device which, upon command, has the ability to control every other device in its network, one which is always "listening," are common conveniences, and they're ever-more relied upon to get a person through the day.
Paranoia? Perhaps; there may not be an actual human being tracking you at the moment, but if a human being... say, for instance, a federal law enforcement agency unhappy with your low "social credit score," were to become interested in your every geographical move, every keystroke you ever typed into your devices, how fast you were driving... or whether your refrigerator was a quart of milk low, make no mistake, with all that information stored in a database just waiting for its retrieval, you can be sure, it'll get retrieved... and so will you!
Ted Kaczynski was a paranoid schizophrenic... and a murderer, but that doesn't obviate his prescience; his fears have come to pass... we're already living in a surveillance state. And with the blinding acceleration of technological advances and the advent of artificial intelligence, can the supplantation of humans be far behind? It's a question worth pondering...
Feel free to do just that whilst waiting for algorithms to decide whether this "manifesto" should be published... and recording your comments if it is!
