HSS, the FBI, and the Unabomber

In the mid-1990s, efforts to identify the Unabomber brought HSS and the FBI into a brief collaborative relationship until the 1996 arrest of Theodore Kaczynski. This article explores this strange syzygy of organizations and individuals. In doing so, it considers Kaczynski's own writings about science and technology—most notably, his 1995 manifesto “Industrial Society and Its Future”—and places this against a backdrop of scholarly and popular writings, as well as the so-called Science Wars of that era. While uncomfortable to consider, Kaczynski’s manifesto is one of the most widely read documents about modern science and technology. One might even go so far as to say that Kaczynski was the most-read science and technology studies (STS) author of the 1990s. We also consider HSS’s collaboration with the FBI as well as the social responsibilities of historians of science then and now.