The actual linked wikia article is short on the actual detail and background of exactly why the Butlarian Jihad actually happened.
I’m an avid Dune fan. Sidebar/background: The son of the Dune writer, Brian Herbert, and his cowriter Kevin J. Anderson wrote the setting, events, and conclusion to the actual Butlarian Jihad conflictt. It’s largely derided by scifi fans, but is highly entertaining. It’s actually still ongoing almost 3 decades later. And frankly not as deserving of the harsh criticism it got when it came out. But I digress…
Here’s how it went down in the dune universe (I’m certainly messing up some details, but these are the broad strokes):
Humanity has spread to the stars. No FTL involved, just good old fashioned sublight engines. The dune universe takes place about 50-60,000 years in our future. Mankind has spread across a couple dozen solar systems and everything is going peachy. However, mankind gets complacent, fat, and happy with their success and society stagnates. A handful of eager, ambitious humans scheme about how they can take it all over. They do, and then eventually start turning themselves into cyborgs, or disembodies brains in a jars that swap bodies and are effectively immortal. One of the cyborgs gets lazy and makes an AI to manage things, which promptly takes over, overthrows the cyborg rulers of humanity, makes the cyborgs it’s slaves (who have great autonomy/are conspirators) and generally rules over everything. A small group of solar systems is left under human control, who fall back to a feudal-ish type system of government with lords and dukes and whatnot.
The AI does all sorts of nasty shit to the humans in it’s dominion. Unit 931 and Auschwitz type experiences, slavery until death, etc. Untold billions, if not trillions, of humans live in animal-like conditons worked to death. The human group of systems isn’t cool with this, but they can’t do much and are vastly overpowered by the cyborgs, so a fragile peace is held. One day, the son of one of the subservient cyborgs knocks up a human slave, and they have a kid. In the background, all sorts of rabble rousing and shenanigans are being done to stir unrest amoungst the slaves by the free human system. The human systems develop FTL, with spice as a catalyst, except it doesn’t work 10% of the time and kills the pilots. The AI’s main henchman (who does all of the nazi and Unit 931-type experiments) decides it would be cool to kill the baby of the cyborg son and the slave. The slaves last name was “Butler”/ This sparks a massive revolt by the slave worlds. The free human systems then go on to fight a prolonged war against the machines, using the FTL drive at great loss of life, to begin a “Butlarian jihad” to free the humans from thinking machines. Lots of other stuff happens, and humanity eventually wins, but this is why machines no more advanced than a desktop machine are allowed in the dune universe, and why they technologically hobble themselves.
Here’s how it went down in the dune universe (I’m certainly messing up some details, but these are the broad strokes):
Humanity has spread to the stars. No FTL involved, just good old fashioned sublight engines. The dune universe takes place about 50-60,000 years in our future. Mankind has spread across a couple dozen solar systems and everything is going peachy. However, mankind gets complacent, fat, and happy with their success and society stagnates. A handful of eager, ambitious humans scheme about how they can take it all over. They do, and then eventually start turning themselves into cyborgs, or disembodies brains in a jars that swap bodies and are effectively immortal. One of the cyborgs gets lazy and makes an AI to manage things, which promptly takes over, overthrows the cyborg rulers of humanity, makes the cyborgs it’s slaves (who have great autonomy/are conspirators) and generally rules over everything. A small group of solar systems is left under human control, who fall back to a feudal-ish type system of government with lords and dukes and whatnot.
The AI does all sorts of nasty shit to the humans in it’s dominion. Unit 931 and Auschwitz type experiences, slavery until death, etc. Untold billions, if not trillions, of humans live in animal-like conditons worked to death. The human group of systems isn’t cool with this, but they can’t do much and are vastly overpowered by the cyborgs, so a fragile peace is held. One day, the son of one of the subservient cyborgs knocks up a human slave, and they have a kid. In the background, all sorts of rabble rousing and shenanigans are being done to stir unrest amoungst the slaves by the free human system. The human systems develop FTL, with spice as a catalyst, except it doesn’t work 10% of the time and kills the pilots. The AI’s main henchman (who does all of the nazi and Unit 931-type experiments) decides it would be cool to kill the baby of the cyborg son and the slave. The slaves last name was “Butler”/ This sparks a massive revolt by the slave worlds. The free human systems then go on to fight a prolonged war against the machines, using the FTL drive at great loss of life, to begin a “Butlarian jihad” to free the humans from thinking machines. Lots of other stuff happens, and humanity eventually wins, but this is why machines no more advanced than a desktop machine are allowed in the dune universe, and why they technologically hobble themselves.