Personal thoughts on Ted Kaczynski’s death

Ted Kaczynski has died.

I have many thoughts and some stories.

1: He and I both spent years at the University of Michigan, although not at the same time. I took several classes in the building where he once taught.

2: I taught his manifesto at Centenary College right after it was, ah, published. It was very hard for the students to grapple with, especially since the class hadn’t had any readings or discussions on technology and radical critique.

Several years later, the text came to mind when I taught Bill Joy’s “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.”

3: In prison he became friends with Tim McVeigh and Ramzi Yousef.

4: I’m not sure how many people under 35 know all or any of those three names.

5: Around 2005 I met Ted Kaczynski’s brother and sister-in-law entirely by accident. She, a fine professor at Union College, had taken one of my digital storytelling workshops and so invited me to speak to her colleagues, which I did. Afterwards, she asked me if I minded going out to dinner with herself and her brother. Not at all, I said, and this is how I learned to Google everybody. The gentleman joined us. I didn’t recognize him and, always being shameless, asked what he did with his time.