We're hoping to soon also offer on-line versions of Harvey's anti-computer book from 1968:

THE BEAST OF BUSINESS
A RECORD OF COMPUTER ATROCITIES

Human beings of world, unite! The computers are taking over --and from now it's got to be them or us! This book is a record of their atrocities against the human race...and a guerilla warfare manual for striking back. Do it now-- before it's too late!

Compiled and Edited by Harvey Matusow
copyright © Harvey Matusow, 1968


Fight the creeping computer menace!

Learn how to:

  • De-magnetise your cheques
  • Add millions to your computerised bank statement
  • Get tons of broken bisquits delivered to people you don't like
  • WORRY a computer
  • CONFUSE a computer
  • WRECK a computer


The Beast of Business: a Record of Computer Atrocities
by Harvey Matusow
is out of print now
Originally published by Wolfe, ISBN: 0723400601
In 1969, Harvey Matusow founded the International Society for the Abolition of Data Processing Machines. They had 1,500 members, who looked upon "the computer as an exploitive monster that has turned on its creator," per to the article "Guerrilla War Against Computers," printed in Time magazine, September 12, 1969.

Matusow and his group were convinced that computers were evil machines and that mankind should not only resist but fight against their coming dominance in our day-to-day lives. Matusow himself suggested a number of approaches, such as:

  • Not simply folding, spindling or mutilating punch cards, but carefully "reprogramming" them by cutting additional tiny holes in them to confuse the electronic brains;
  • erasing the magnetic coding on personal cheques so that each cheque would have to be handled by a human, so that it would "get the loving care it deserves";
  • destroying the return portion of a computerized bill and sending the payment with a handwritten note instead, indicating why;
  • pasting stamps on sideways so that computerized sorters could not read them.

Many of the themes and issues of the book are surprisingly valid concerns today, 30 years later. It offers cautionary warnings about the mechanization of society, the risks of credit reporting databases, from a time long before computers had permeated society to the extent we trust and rely on them today.