Summary of Industrial Society and its future
After 15 years of an unstoppable mail-bomb campaign, using the system against itself, terrorist group Freedom Club sent this essay to the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Penthouse magazine with a “bargain” offer: FC would cease attacks against individuals in exchange for the 1995 publication of “Industrial Society and Its Future” (ISAIF), the so-called “Unabomber manifesto.” In it, Kaczynski explains not the obvious damages to Nature from increasing technological powers, but the less-considered problem of the constant restriction of freedom which is required to advance Technology, asserting that our distance from Nature also brings to us the many physical and mental maladies now plaguing modern Man. The manifesto can be summarized into five main arguments.
Modern technology constitutes an inseparable, self-propagating system beyond human control.
Humans cannot adapt, biologically or psychologically, to life in the technological society.
The continued development of the technological system will inevitably lead to catastrophe—for instance, the erosion of human autonomy or the collapse of ecosystems.
Since the system cannot be controlled or reformed, only revolution can prevent catastrophe.
Leftist social movements function as pseudo-rebellions that distract people from the real problem: modern technology.