**I was provided a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for this review - I feel sort of bad about the one star review but it's the only actually negative score you can give on this site**

If you're familiar with Kaczynski's previous work, the title of this book should tell you exactly what you're getting - a meticulously, even laboriously argued 'why' and 'how' to organize an revolution against modern technology. The intent here is to present a series of concise and compelling arguments for such a revolution, backed up with a battery of historical examples, footnotes, and a few appendices to boot. Through distilling lessons from successful political movements such as the Bolsheviks, Irish nationalists, and Maoists in China, TK hopes to provide inspiration and a logical lens for a future anti-tech revolutionary moment.

The lesser weakness in this book is how it reads - again, the reader should be aware that TK's writing is generally very dry and logic-minded, and so is his approach to revolution. The 'why' of the book is very thorough and may benefit people who aren't very familiar with the anti-tech position that he holds, but readers who are already familiar with critiques of industrial society or critical of modern technology may find some relatively simple points and simple speculations over-argued. More generally, the author leans heavily on examples from history as evidence and treats revolution as a science or some kind of logic puzzle that can be solved through sifting through history with a sprinkling of social science - besides the dubiousness of this approach, the writing here also suffers somewhat from a lack of compelling source material (many of the citations earlier on in the book are from encyclopedias, though one can only fault him so much here as I'd imagine his access to texts is relatively limited). Even so, there is a constant sense that we're being presented with the 'facts' in a relatively bare way as if these arguments are evident from history.

The greater weakness lies in the 'how', and Kaczynski's approach to revolution doesn't escape the sources upon which he draws, no matter how much he qualifies himself by claiming one can abstract the lessons of Lenin and Mao to the point where they become some sort of neutral tool for success. His points are grounded in the proof of history - people like Lenin succeeded so we can learn from them - but given that history is littered with people who saw the Bolsheviks or Castro or Mao as inspirations and attempted to use their models to achieve success (and failed to do so) one would expect TK to push his arguments further. TK preempts this critique by saying he's only providing inspiration rather than instructions for success, but given how many specific points and proscriptions he produces these things don't seem so different.

While TK's 'how' disavows the ghost of Communism, it retains the faith in a scientific approach to revolution and fails to take into account how some of the lessons he's taken from 'successful' models - strict hierarchy, political vanguards, expecting total selflessness and sacrifice, treating people as a 'mass', maintaining the horizon of the 'revolution' itself - have and will continue to undermine radical struggles, including the one he wants to see happen. ( )

There are more than a few people who feel that society's rush toward a technological future will lead to disaster. This book presents some pointers for thinking in broad, strategic terms about getting society off that particular road.

The overall goal for any organization, whether it is social, political or environmental, should be clear and simple. It can't be something vague, like "promoting democracy" or "protecting the environment." The goal also needs to be irreversible; once achieved, it can never be taken away. An example is when women got the right to vote in the early 20th century. After it happened, any politician was going to have a very hard time taking it away from them. No matter how democratic an organization claims to be, there will be times when not every issue can be placed before the entire membership for a vote. There needs to be an inner core of committed members with the authority to make such decisions.

Throughout history, many people have suggested that human society needs to be "planned" or "controlled," for various reasons. A huge, chaotic thing like human society can not be controlled to any great extent. At most, it can be "nudged" in one direction or another. Who decides in what direction human society should go? What is a "good" outcome? Assume, just for a moment, that it is possible to control human society. Assume that there is a computer system big enough to handle the trillions of equations that need to be solved. Who is in charge, a person or a small group? Who gets to decide who that person, or people, should be? Can a lack of ego be guaranteed?

A number of writers, including Ray Kurzweil, are looking forward to the day when human immortality, or the coming of human cyborgs or the uploading of a person's brain to a computer become reality. The author asserts that these are nonsense. For instance, immortality will only be available to the one percent, not to everyone.

This book is heavy history and social science, so it is not for everyone. The reader will get a lot out of it. This is very highly recommended. ( )

Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How is the latest work of Dr. Theodore J. Kaczynski, more commonly known as The Unabomber. Contrary to portrayal of him as a deranged hick hell-bent on the purposeless destruction of lives and property, Dr. Kaczynski is an intelligent (he has a PhD in Mathematics from Harvard), highly erudite man whose insights into society’s current path are independent of the destructive acts he committed.
Anti-Tech Revolution would be better subtitled ‘Theory and Practice;’ as he states in the preface, his intent with this book is not to convert people to seeing things his way but rather to provide a solid theoretical and practical basis for hard core technophobes to base their revolutionary practices on. To this end most of the book examines previous revolutions and revolutionary organizations to demonstrate the ideal configuration of revolutionary cadres, the scope of their activities and traps to avoid.

The book is divided into four chapters each with multiple sections and has several appendices as well to support the contentions of each. Chapter one argues that there is no way to rationally plan or control society; chapter two, that the current global technological system will inevitably destroy at least itself if not the planet; chapter three examines various past revolutionary and activist groups and from them abstracts general principles for revolutionary success and chapter four offers general strategems for any prospective anti-tech revolutionaries. Each chapter has an appendix with additional information supporting its main arguments.

Briefly, Dr. Kaczynski argues that human societies are too complex for any rational, centralized planning to hope to constrain, let alone guide. Human societies are a class of and themselves comprised of self-propogating systems which are in constant competition with each other. If they were to constrain their development for whatever reason then another society would inevitably go ahead and develop in the potentially harmful way, defeating those who abstained from the dangerous developments. Thus, dangerous technological advances such as genetic enhancements, mind controlling substances or ‘strong’ AI cannot be stopped by mere regulation and censure. The only way to prevent the catastrophe of global warming, AI domination and the probable attendant destruction of Earth’s capacity to sustain biological life is through an anti-technological revolution. Technophiles who suppose that genetic engineering, cybernetic augmentation or mind uploading would allow them to survive would inevitably give up everything they value as the Darwinian struggle for survival would put any system clutching at human sentiments would inevitably be at a severe disadvantage in the posthuman world (this is similar to the ideas of noted transhumanists Robin Hanson, Hugo de Garis and Hans Moravec, who have all argued that AI domination would inevitably lead to a neo-Darwinian era in which multitudinous forms of life would exist but most would likely not be that which we value).

The would-be anti-tech revolutionary faces an apparently impossible task, as the system seemingly provides utmost satisfaction of all human desires and is in little immediate danger of breaking down. However, Dr. Kaczynski points out (as again do many technophiles) that automation will soon unemploy the majority of the human labor pool, including such professions as medicine, law and even software development; additionally, anthropogenic climate change shows no sign of amelioration. Taking the revolutions of Lenin, Castro and Mao as his main examples, he shows that any successful revolutionary organization will ensurer that they have a single, simple, concrete goal; that they will focus on recruiting the best, most unquestionably loyal operatives they can and will have an impeccable sense of timing as well as an indefatigable optimistic streak. They will also be more than willing to use cunning and ruthless methods, as their goal is nothing less than the destruction of technological society; no means to this are outside consideration.

Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How would be a fascinating book for its concise distillation of the methods of revolution alone; combined with the controversial but well argued view that industrial society will inevitably lead the extinction of humanity, if not all life on Earth, it is a book that one could only expect from such a focused, unsentimental mind as Dr. Kacznyski’s. Its style and lexicon may be a bit unusual (here his background as an academic mathematician shows the most) and, as previously mentioned, no one who was not already of the mind that technological society is the primary threat to human existence will find this book inspiring, but for anyone interested in the theory of revolutions in general who is curious about the anti-technological movement or the deeper thought of Dr. Kaczynski will find this a useful volume.

[Disclosure: the author of this review received a complimentary copy of Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How from Fitch and Madison Publishers for review] ( )