Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts

Thursday, June 28, 2012

the unabomber as a radical philosopher of technology?



David Skrbina and Ted Kaczynski have been corresponding since 2003, and they have a lot in common - intellectually, I mean.  Both come from educational backgrounds in mathematics; both have since turned from math to philosophy; and both are fascinated by the relationship between technology and society. Skrbina has also written a good bit on panpsychism, a philosophy which sees 'mind' in all things and which he relates to eco-philosophy, so it's not entirely unsurprising that in 2010 Feral House published a collection of Kaczynski's writings as Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski, a.k.a. "The Unabomber," with a supportive introduction from Skrbina.  Like Skrbina, Kaczynski develops a critique of technological society from a perspective of mind/ psychology rather than from more (academically) conventional dialectical or social constructivist approaches; also like Skrbina, he questions the levels of dependence on technology in 'advanced' societies.