---
created_at: '2017-08-02T10:37:11.000Z'
title: Letter from Unabomber to Dr. David Gelernter (1995)
url: http://www.montanaheritageproject.org/edheritage/1910/unabomber.htm
author: nafey
points: 81
story_text: 
comment_text: 
num_comments: 85
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1501670231
_tags:
- story
- author_nafey
- story_14909439
objectID: '14909439'

---
[Source](http://www.montanaheritageproject.org/edheritage/1910/unabomber.htm "Permalink to Text of Letter from Unabomber to Dr")

# Text of Letter from Unabomber to Dr


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### Text of Letter from Unabomber to Dr. David Gelernter

* * *

The text of the letter sent by the Ted Kazinski (a.k.a the Unabomber) to one of his victims, Dr. David Gelernter of Yale University. Gelernter suffered extensive wounds to his abdomen, chest, face and hands in the June 1993 bombing. 

* * *

Dr. Gelernter: 

People with advanced degrees aren't as smart as they think they are. If you'd had any brains you would have realized that there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are changing the world and you wouldn't have been dumb enough to open an unexpected package from an unknown source. 

In the epilog of your book, ``Mirror Worlds,'' you tried to justify your research by claiming that the developments you describe are inevitable, and that any college person can learn enough about computers to compete in a computer-dominated world. Apparently, people without a college degree don't count. In any case, being informed about computers won't enable anyone to prevent invasion of privacy (through computers), genetic engineering (to which computers make an important contribution), environmental degradation through excessive economic growth (computers make an important contribution to economic growth) and so forth. 

As for the inevitability argument, if the developments you describe are inevitable, they are not inevitable in the way that old age and bad weather are inevitable. They are inevitable only because techno-nerds like you make them inevitable. If there were no computer scientists there would be no progress in computer science. If you claim you are justified in pursuing your research because the developments involved are inevitable, then you may as well say that theft is inevitable, therefore we shouldn't blame thieves. 

But we do not believe that progress and growth are inevitable. 

We'll have more to say about that later. 

FC 

P.S. Warren Hoge of the New York Times can confirm that this letter does come from FC. 

* * *

There were at least three other letters sent by the Unabomber that the F.B.I. Taskforce has released to the public.

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