It's getting so that you can't go

to a party or hang at a bar

without some tedious

"neo-Luddite" regaling you with

his shot glass philosophy on the

evils of technology. Depending

upon on how much alcohol you've

consumed, these types can be

good for a laugh or two, but

after a while it's tough to

withstand their all-too-common

combined assault of historical

ignorance and circular logic.

The anarchists and their retarded

hillbilly cousins, the

neo-Luddites, both fail to

understand a basic human truth:

People prefer MTV to leprosy.

The Unabomber, who identifies

with both movements, seems to

think that the Industrial

Revolution is the root of all

present-day ills. He yearns for

a better society, one where

everybody is responsible for

slopping their own pigs, burying

their own stillborn offspring,

and meticulously hand-carving

their own custom explosives.

Fuck that.

The Unabomber is the tragicomic

apotheosis of the anarchist

stereotype: armed with

long-winded harangues, a

battered copy of The Poor Man's

James Bond, and a conspicuous

lack of sympathizers he goes

about trying to alert the world

to the evils of

cyber-capitalism: as if we

didn't already know, buddy.

Problem is, just as with the

annoying anarcho-lush at the

kegger, frustration ensues when

he discovers nobody's listening.

That's when he starts hosing

down ad execs and college

professors with his home-brew

pipe bombs, forcing his

laughable manuscript upon

innocent media consumers, and

generally blasting his way into

the center of attention.

The Unabomber's tragic flaw isn't

being born into the wrong era -

it's his inability to formulate

any intelligent criticism of the

system he so hates. It's not as

if technoskeptics don't get

their fair share of attention -

bozos like Kirkpatrick Sales get

feature stories in magazines

like Wired and Harper's on an

almost monthly basis.

And look at Clifford Stoll, who

followed up his mostly

interesting Stalking the Wily

Hacker with Silicon Snake Oil, a

collection of gregariously

repeated rants so barren of

content as to be readable during

one extended session on the

growler (where it was most

likely conceived) - yet the

hardcover did gangbusters at the

newsstand.

It's ironic that so much

discussion over the foibles of

our dim-witted adversary takes

place on the Internet, which is

arguably the epitome of the

industrial system he so

despises. While he deplores the

"progressively narrowing sphere

of human freedom," his writing

and discussion thereof flows

freely here. The net has even

given him his own Freedom Club,

though I'd say it's far more

likely that the net will help

bring him down rather than

muster up a small militia.

As one optimistic Usenet poster

offered, "I hope they give him a

TV in his cell that's stuck on

The Discovery Channel and can't

be turned off."

Ultimately, most of us

will just keep surfing.

Pseudo-revolutionary manifestos

are a dime a dozen around these

parts, many of them considerably

shorter than the Unabomber's own

35,000 word long Industrial

Society and Its Future - and if

we're really that desperate for

reading material, Mr. Unabomber,

we'll take the Reader's Digest

condensed version, thank you.