On September 19, 1995, a text appeared in Washington Post who published the essay entitled “Industrial society and its future”, and with which the then one of the most wanted people by the FBI, the terrorist “Unabomber”, assured that violence would stop in exchange for the publication of his ideas.
And for two decades, from 1975 to 1995, Ted Kaczynskiwho earned the nickname “Unabomber”, had committed 16 bombings that killed three people and injured 23 others, making him the target of one of the costliest investigations in FBI history, with up to $1 million offered for his head, but he was arrested a year later in April 1996.
The curious life of the terrorist “Unabomber” which will be adapted for the cinema
Theodor John Kaczynski He was born in 1942 in the state of Illinois, in a suburb near Chicago, into a family of Polish origin who instilled in him a love of music and nature. From an early age, he stood out for his good academic results, entering school Harvard University at only 16 years old and where he obtained with honors a doctorate in mathematics from the University University of Michigan and later worked as a professor at University of Berkeley At just 25 years old, he is the youngest professor this prestigious institution has ever had.
A job that he left, however, in 1969 when he decided to live with his brother David in Great Falls, where a 12 square meter cabin without electricity, running water or telephone was built on common land. It would be there that he would give free rein to his ideas which would lead him to commit several bomb attacks since 1975, killing three people and injuring 23, some being professors, others university students, but also directors of computer stores or passengers on a flight.
The FBI investigation to catch him and his life will be a biographical film directed by Netflixin a feature film directed by Metzwritten by Sam Chalsen and Nelson Graves, with actors such as Jacob Tremblay in the role of Ted Kaczynski, as well as Russell Crowe, Shailene Woodley or Annabelle Wallis. A project announced last June and which still does not have a planned release date.
The manifesto in which he presented his ideas, but led to his arrest
This essay published in 1995 in the aforementioned journal, “Industrial society and its future”, was recently published for the first time in Spanish by Errata naturae, alongside other texts by the terrorist philosopher, who committed suicide in 2023 in the United States prison where he was incarcerated and serving a life sentence since 1996. Some texts from Kaczynski of which he justifies the publication in the prologue of From a distant forest. Technology, collapse and revolution and that its objective is not “to magnify the myth of any outlaw, but rather to offer the reader a theoretical and critical tool which, in the times in which we live, seems more necessary every day”.
An essay that reflects on technological society with developing topics such as cancellation on social networks, stress problems or the danger of the appearance of new technologies without humans being able to control them. “The history of art, literature and thought is populated by monsters. Monsters in many respects despicable whose works we nevertheless admire,” comments the publisher. Ruben Hernández in the prologue of the aforementioned book.
“Not only do people become dependent individually, but so does the system as a whole, so that the system can move in a direction marked by previous and established technological innovations and ever towards greater technologization. Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that technology will eventually acquire almost absolute control over human behavior,” he explains in one of the sections of his essay.
The published essay served its purpose of being heard, but it also led to his arrest. It was his David Kaczynski who informed the FBI that the “Unabomber” was his brother Ted, who was finally arrested in 1996 after two decades of one of the most expensive investigations and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole by declaring himself mentally competent and denying the health problems his defense wanted to allege. He committed suicide in 1993 at the age of 81, suffering from cancer in prison.
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