Hmm, I’m not sure I buy your contention. You can point to an individual instance of applying a specific technology and say “it is an extension of a particular human intention”, sure. But this is not commutative; Person A’s application of Technology X to Situation 1 is “extension of human intention”, but to Person B who is also in Situation 1, Technology X is “counter force in opposition to (Person B’s) humanity”. See for instance social media recommendation algorithms. I know a girl who can’t use TikTok because she loves pets and can’t look away from families grieving their pets - even starting from a blank slate, the algorithm quickly detects that grief videos engage her, and so inevitably fills up her feed with dead dogs. She absolutely experiences this particular technology as a distinct, and distinctly anti-human, counter force.
Even if every instance of technology has its origins as an extension of human intention, it is still valid to look at the unintended consequences that are anti-humanity, and it is valid to filter for just these negative experiences and say “technology is a counter force”.
That’s not disagreeing with your contention that it is an extension, by the way - it’s saying “also”.
It’s been a long time since I read Kaczynski’s manifesto and I only skimmed it at the time, so I can’t recall whether he makes this claim, or whether I had this thought myself as an obvious patch to his claims. But I think he did say this.
The issue with that argument is that it is way too general.
IE, suppose one lion has shaper teeth. It uses those teeth to catch antelope more efficiently. The other lions see those sharp teeth as inherently anti-lion because those teeth deprive the rest of them of delicious antelope.
This is exactly how it plays out with humans too, except 1) we can develop ways to sharpen our teeth, and 2) we can organize opposition to individuals who, according to the majority, behave unfairly. The resulting dynamics are obviously much more complicated than with lions, but the phenomenon is there.
I mean, imagine that the lion went on to catch more antelope than it needs to eat, and started to sell the surplus in exchange for cleaning its beard or some other services. The other lions then figure out this is not a bad strategy, and start doing their best to also capture a surplus to trade - perhaps going as far as inventing tricks and tools that let them hunt even more efficiently than the original lion with sharper teeth. This continues for a while, until antelope population crashes and most of the lions starve.
Survivors, should they be smart enough, pass on the story of those events - aptly calling it the Tragedy of Commons. Perhaps a couple generations later, when a lion with sharper teeth starts setting up antelope carcass trade again, they wisely band together to form a lion government, and dispense hunting quotas.
Thus is the story of civilization and technology, in a nutshell.
Even if every instance of technology has its origins as an extension of human intention, it is still valid to look at the unintended consequences that are anti-humanity, and it is valid to filter for just these negative experiences and say “technology is a counter force”.
That’s not disagreeing with your contention that it is an extension, by the way - it’s saying “also”.
It’s been a long time since I read Kaczynski’s manifesto and I only skimmed it at the time, so I can’t recall whether he makes this claim, or whether I had this thought myself as an obvious patch to his claims. But I think he did say this.