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I've been under the impression that Anarchists tend to hate modern technology like computers, but I wasn't quite sure.  In an anarchist society, would modern technology like computers exist?  I am unsure of my political stance right now and I'm considering anarchism, but I'm also kind of a computer nerd and so I was wondering if it'd be an oxymoron for an Anarchist to like computers and modern technology.
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1 Answer

+1 vote
many anarchists are not against technology at all. there are plenty of anarchists who see technology as a possible solution to things like information dispersal, centralization of power, etc. however, those anarchists don't usually come to this site (iconoclast is an exception, i think).

this particular website has attracted a number of anarchists who do have a critique of technology.
but the critique of the world we live in doesn't mean that we don't live in the world.
ie, anarchists use all kinds of things that they/we are against.
a) we want to be understood by others, and b) there's no linear relationship between the change we want and us individually refusing to use a particular thing or set of things.
you could use language as an example. there are many things in english that are problematic - like the ease with with object and subject are seen as distinct and unconnected, and the related assumptions that the structure of english validate and recreate. but if i stopped speaking english, i wouldn't be able to live a life, or to encourage you to think about english differently, and it's unlikely that my rejection of my birth language would make much difference towards a different world.
in actual fact, i like language, and i spend time correcting people's spelling and punctuation and grammar...  which one could say is directly contradicted by my sense of what the world should be like...

being an anarchist is full of contradictions in this world.
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