Butlerian Jihad
The Butlerian Jihad, also known as the Great Revolt as well as commonly shortened to the Jihad, was the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots that began in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G.
The Butlerian Jihad comes up while the Reverend Mother tests Paul. She tests for humans, she says, to set him free. In the past men handed their thinking to machines in the hope of freedom, and that only let other men with machines enslave them. Paul answers with a commandment against making a machine that copies a man's mind, and she traces it to the Orange Catholic Bible and the Jihad. In her view, that Bible should have forbidden any machine that counterfeits a human mind.
As she puts it, the Great Revolt took a crutch away and forced human minds to develop. Schools arose to train human talents, and of those ancient schools two chief survivors remain, the Spacing Guild and the Bene Gesserit. The Guild, as far as her order can tell, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. The Bene Gesserit serve another function, and Paul works out that it is politics.
How far into Dune have you read?
Set your place and this page rewrites itself to exactly that point. Nothing ahead of you will show.