Pretty detailed list. You should also have Ted Kaczynski’s Industrial Society and its Future. Even though he committed terrorist acts and he died in prison where he belonged, the manifesto that was first published in the Washington Post in 1995 is worth reading, especially regarding how technology can have a negative effect on human individuals. Some of the quotes are quite relevant today sadly especially with the mental health crisis with kids and screens.
“The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system.”- Ted Kaczynski
“The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.”- Ted Kaczynski
Industrialism started in 1780 with the invention of cotton mills, which were insanely profitable (before then, cotton was as expensive as silk). So you can consider that Industrialism ended the age of Enlightenment and sparked the Romantic resistance (to "dark, satanic mills"). Regarding Frank Herbert, you wrote: "Frank Herbert was an editor in San Francisco when the tech thing took off." Reviewing his bio on Wikipedia, Herbert started working on Dune in 1959 because his wife was able to be the breadwinner. So, the "tech thing" in San Francisco in those days was radar, radio, television, missiles, planes, nukes, etc., a lot of it government funded. There was not much in the way of a counter culture. But Herbert was born in 1920, which was the end of the Republican Party as a progressive party, so it is not surprising that Herbert was a Republican who understood ecology (he grew up with progressive Republicans).
I remember when microprocessors were invented. It was after the Summer of Love. I worked at Intel when it was a small company. I remember that people wondered if there were a market for personal computers; it turned out that there was a large market for spreadsheets on personal computers. The corporations that are causing so much concern today did not exist then. The "tech thing" keeps taking off. Technical solutions cause problems that stimulate the development of technical solutions, a feedback loop.
In Dune, Herbert hand waved away the technical issues. Does that make him a Romantic?
Great and thought provoking list, thank you! I would also mention “Maniac” by Benjamín Labatut, a powerful addition any anti-tech canon, tracing the dark lineage of modern technology through the life of John von Neumann. The novel explores the birth of quantum mechanics, the creation of the first computers, and the ominous rise of artificial intelligence.
In the first part, Labatut recounts how scientific breakthroughs—originally driven by a search for truth—became tools of destruction, with early physicists unknowingly setting the stage for the atomic bomb. The centerpiece focuses on von von Neumann, whose genius helped design both nuclear strategy and computational logic, pushing humanity toward a mechanized, dehumanized future.
The third part envisions a world shaped by AI, where human agency fades as machines begin to outthink and outmaneuver us. Labatut presents technology not as progress, but as a force of alienation and existential peril—making Maniac a stark, lyrical warning about the cost of unchecked innovation.
I’d Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park.” A modern-day “Frankenstein” that shows what happens when technological achievement is motivated only by profit. Plus, a heaping dose of chaos theory (which explains a lot), and a much-needed reminder that we do not know more than Mother Nature.
David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” is a great novelistic companion to Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” But perhaps one thousand page post modern epic is enough!
Think my biggest addition would be Blood Meridian. Reads to me as a story of “civilization” creeping forward and claiming to replace or remove the savagery that cleared its way while retaining it in unseen ways. Thematically fits alongside The Tempest.
Was he ever! Such a loss. He got me at The Utopia of Rules - incredible collection of essays on, as he called it “technology, authority, and stupidity”.
I would include William Gibson's "Neromancer." Gibson writes of the near future, but he's a student of the Industrial Revolution. He writes of a future where information technology has run rampant over every aspect of civilization, where outlaw hackers called "console cowboys" can directly "jack in" their brains into a cyberspace which has its own entities, where a behemoth corporation has economic hegemony. The Wachowskis almost certainly read him before working on "The Matrix."
Lysistrata by ancient Greek playwright, Aristophanes, which I first read in 1970 and it felt modern at the time. It drove home the point that we have been talking about this stuff for a long long time.
As to an antitech revolt nobody does it better than Kurt Vonnegut in Player Piano. Vonnegut understands his fellow humans better than anybody out there.
Finally A safe read about the human condition in that it is set in the far future. Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home
Pretty detailed list. You should also have Ted Kaczynski’s Industrial Society and its Future. Even though he committed terrorist acts and he died in prison where he belonged, the manifesto that was first published in the Washington Post in 1995 is worth reading, especially regarding how technology can have a negative effect on human individuals. Some of the quotes are quite relevant today sadly especially with the mental health crisis with kids and screens.
“The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system.”- Ted Kaczynski
“The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.”- Ted Kaczynski
Industrialism started in 1780 with the invention of cotton mills, which were insanely profitable (before then, cotton was as expensive as silk). So you can consider that Industrialism ended the age of Enlightenment and sparked the Romantic resistance (to "dark, satanic mills"). Regarding Frank Herbert, you wrote: "Frank Herbert was an editor in San Francisco when the tech thing took off." Reviewing his bio on Wikipedia, Herbert started working on Dune in 1959 because his wife was able to be the breadwinner. So, the "tech thing" in San Francisco in those days was radar, radio, television, missiles, planes, nukes, etc., a lot of it government funded. There was not much in the way of a counter culture. But Herbert was born in 1920, which was the end of the Republican Party as a progressive party, so it is not surprising that Herbert was a Republican who understood ecology (he grew up with progressive Republicans).
I remember when microprocessors were invented. It was after the Summer of Love. I worked at Intel when it was a small company. I remember that people wondered if there were a market for personal computers; it turned out that there was a large market for spreadsheets on personal computers. The corporations that are causing so much concern today did not exist then. The "tech thing" keeps taking off. Technical solutions cause problems that stimulate the development of technical solutions, a feedback loop.
In Dune, Herbert hand waved away the technical issues. Does that make him a Romantic?
Intriguing list, thanks for sharing! Many of the books I haven’t read although they were already on my list and others haven’t even been in it.
Just as a comparison, here s what chatgpt 4.0 recommends based on your intro and framing (quite some overlaps and interesting alternatives)😉
Reading List: Toward a Human-Centered Tech Ethic
I. Philosophy, Ethics & Moral Imagination
1. Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus
A call to embrace meaning and dignity even in an absurd world.
2. Simone Weil – Gravity and Grace
Spiritual clarity in the face of power, violence, and materialism.
3. Martin Buber – I and Thou
A foundational text on dialogue, encounter, and relational life.
4. Hannah Arendt – The Human Condition
What it means to act, think, and create meaningfully in a world of machines.
5. Alasdair MacIntyre – After Virtue
On the collapse of shared moral systems—and what we can recover.
6. Martha Nussbaum – Creating Capabilities
A human development framework based on dignity and flourishing.
7. Byung-Chul Han – The Burnout Society
Modern tech capitalism as a system of internalized exploitation.
8. Charles Taylor – The Ethics of Authenticity
Resisting flattening forms of instrumental rationality.
9. Ivan Illich – Tools for Conviviality
Designing technologies that empower rather than dominate.
10. Paul Feyerabend – The Tyranny of Science
On scientific arrogance and epistemological pluralism.
⸻
II. Systems Thinking & Complexity
11. Gregory Bateson – Steps to an Ecology of Mind
Cybernetics, feedback, and the need for ecological intelligence.
12. Donella Meadows – Thinking in Systems
Practical insight into how complex systems behave—and fail.
13. Iain McGilchrist – The Master and His Emissary
How brain hemispheres reflect competing worldviews—analytic vs. holistic.
14. Fritjof Capra – The Web of Life
Re-envisioning biology and society as interdependent networks.
15. Nora Bateson – Small Arcs of Larger Circles
A poetic systems thinker’s view on interwovenness and grace.
⸻
III. Spiritual and Indigenous Wisdom
16. Robin Wall Kimmerer – Braiding Sweetgrass
A botanist and indigenous thinker reclaims reciprocity and reverence.
17. Black Elk – Black Elk Speaks
Lakota wisdom on vision, ritual, and interconnection.
18. Thomas Berry – The Dream of the Earth
A cosmologist’s call for an ecological spiritual awakening.
19. Bill Plotkin – Soulcraft
Technology may serve ego, but soul needs myth, depth, and wildness.
20. Thich Nhat Hanh – The Art of Living
How presence and compassion can shape every field—including tech.
⸻
IV. Literature as Deep Critique
21. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Notes from Underground
The limits of reason and the soul’s revolt against cold rationalism.
22. Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
Techno-utopia as dehumanizing dystopia.
23. Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
The original myth of creation without care, innovation without ethics.
24. Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and the Sun
An AI companion raises human questions machines can’t answer.
25. George Orwell – 1984
Surveillance, data, and power in their most terrifying alignment.
⸻
V. Critical Tech and Future Thought
26. Shoshana Zuboff – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
How tech extracts human experience as raw material.
27. Douglas Rushkoff – Team Human
Why we must reclaim human agency in a digital world.
28. Tristan Harris – The Ledger of Harms (public paper + talks)
How to reorient tech design toward ethics and wellbeing.
29. Ruha Benjamin – Race After Technology
How algorithms reinforce systemic inequality—and how to resist.
30. Jenny Odell – How to Do Nothing
A quiet manifesto for attention, place, and reclaiming human time.
⸻
Optional Bonus Categories
• Design ethics: Victor Papanek – Design for the Real World
• AI philosophy: Brian Cantwell Smith – The Promise of Artificial Intelligence
• Poetic insight: David Whyte – Consolations
• Futures thinking: Bayo Akomolafe – These Wilds Beyond Our Fences
Not a novel, but I'd recommend Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" (1967). Seems more relevant than ever.
Great and thought provoking list, thank you! I would also mention “Maniac” by Benjamín Labatut, a powerful addition any anti-tech canon, tracing the dark lineage of modern technology through the life of John von Neumann. The novel explores the birth of quantum mechanics, the creation of the first computers, and the ominous rise of artificial intelligence.
In the first part, Labatut recounts how scientific breakthroughs—originally driven by a search for truth—became tools of destruction, with early physicists unknowingly setting the stage for the atomic bomb. The centerpiece focuses on von von Neumann, whose genius helped design both nuclear strategy and computational logic, pushing humanity toward a mechanized, dehumanized future.
The third part envisions a world shaped by AI, where human agency fades as machines begin to outthink and outmaneuver us. Labatut presents technology not as progress, but as a force of alienation and existential peril—making Maniac a stark, lyrical warning about the cost of unchecked innovation.
I’d Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park.” A modern-day “Frankenstein” that shows what happens when technological achievement is motivated only by profit. Plus, a heaping dose of chaos theory (which explains a lot), and a much-needed reminder that we do not know more than Mother Nature.
Completely amazing list+1 for McGilchrist and BC Han
Seeing these two put a big smile on my face.
David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” is a great novelistic companion to Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” But perhaps one thousand page post modern epic is enough!
Think my biggest addition would be Blood Meridian. Reads to me as a story of “civilization” creeping forward and claiming to replace or remove the savagery that cleared its way while retaining it in unseen ways. Thematically fits alongside The Tempest.
Have you read "Butcher's Crossing?"
I feel like Blood Meridian, Butcher's Crossing, and Lonesome Dove together are a crippling indictment of American Capitalism.
Seconded! I just finished reading BM for the second time.
The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
I’d add Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber.
And "The Dawn of Everything"!
Also, "Debt: the 1st 5000 Years".
He was a talented fella!
Was he ever! Such a loss. He got me at The Utopia of Rules - incredible collection of essays on, as he called it “technology, authority, and stupidity”.
And Landon Winner’s Autonomous Technology to survey what was understood about this in the 60s and 70s.
And Jacque Ellul: The Technocratic Society (if you’re ambitious)
He has three. It's a series. Cold and dire stuff, but Ellul doesn't play around,
I would include William Gibson's "Neromancer." Gibson writes of the near future, but he's a student of the Industrial Revolution. He writes of a future where information technology has run rampant over every aspect of civilization, where outlaw hackers called "console cowboys" can directly "jack in" their brains into a cyberspace which has its own entities, where a behemoth corporation has economic hegemony. The Wachowskis almost certainly read him before working on "The Matrix."
Kinda funny that we’re discovering them on tech.
My add ons
Lysistrata by ancient Greek playwright, Aristophanes, which I first read in 1970 and it felt modern at the time. It drove home the point that we have been talking about this stuff for a long long time.
As to an antitech revolt nobody does it better than Kurt Vonnegut in Player Piano. Vonnegut understands his fellow humans better than anybody out there.
Finally A safe read about the human condition in that it is set in the far future. Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home
Good concise Mumford someone on the same page - and also “Honest”,https://www.artberman.com/blog/pharaohs-to-ai-the-long-ascent-of-the-superorganism/