Butlerian Handbook

Once men turned their think­ing over to ma­chines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only per­mit­ted other men with ma­chines to en­slave them.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
If we reach a point where the choice is all or noth­ing, we must choose noth­ing.
― Ben De Bono, The Sci-Fi Christian, № 1071 The Butlerian Manifesto
Do some­thing every day that does not com­pute.
— Wendell Berry

This is not a list of virtues and vices. I’m not ar­gu­ing that all the less hu­man” ac­tions are bad; many of them I do, and plan to con­tinue do­ing.

It’s not an ar­gu­ment for re­turn­ing to a sup­posed Golden Age. We can­not go back the 1950s, the 1850s, or the 1350s, and should not if we could.

But it’s time to ex­am­ine how we live with tech­nol­ogy. What is the ag­gre­gate re­sult of all the small changes we’ve ac­cepted? We can­not ac­cept a pri­ori every tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment as good. We may need to pump the brakes.

Handbook