A new history of the Luddites, "Blood in the Machine," argues that 19th century fears about technology are still relevant today. It's the latest in a long line of attempts to reclaim the label.
The Majority Report had an excellent interview with this author Brian Merchant who wrote the book "Blood in the Machine" about the luddites. It is quite interesting that luddites were not against technology, they were against the owner class using machines to replace skilled workers with unskilled workers using mechanized systems for lower pay and taking all the profits.
There are also two rather excellent podcast episodes about luddites and the book, one by 99 percent invisible that discusses more about the concept in general and another by Cautionary Tales that is focused on the luddites and what they did.
Alright fine, I'll be a Luddite now. Every time we 'upgrade' or 'make progress' it is really about controling the working class and circumventing a previous business model. Capital pays more and more for the inputs: fuel and technology, in order to justify their control. And then once they have it, they use progress to justify poor labor protections. They never use the predicted best solution, or even a compromise, they use the solution that offers them more power.
You can be both, and a lot of us are. A Luddite wouldn't be opposed to the automation of jobs in a socialist society, nobody is being exploited in that case.
We question and oppose the tech right now because that isn't the society we live in. It isn't really about the tech at all, it's about who controls it and how they're using it.
Absolutely. And I celebrate every act of sabotage, from people putting traffic cones on robotaxis to people shooting down drones flying over their land.
I love technological progress and am no Luddite but the technology that’s most visible to consumers rarely just makes everyone’s lives better. For every truly transformative tech like smartphones, there’s a dozen “disruptions” that just replace some previously functioning part of society with something shittier. (Like phone trees instead of a customer service agent. AirBnB causing rent to rise while breaking zoning laws. Generative A.I. has potential but so far, it’s mostly just automating content farms. Crypto wasn’t a real technological innovation but Silicon Valley VCs pretended it was.)
In a competitive market, even those shitty “innovations” would eventually translate into lower prices but we live in an age of weak enforcement of laws to create and foster competitive markets. Of course there’s a rise in pissed off consumers when all the upside goes to profits/shareholders.
Smartphones disrupted so more industries than they are at risk now because of any new techs, disrupting previously functional parts of the society. They sent home thousands of workers, ruining the life people with previously highly regarded jobs, from retail to bank and finance. Why do you regarded their introduction as "better"? Probably because we were just younger, and you were more open to changes, and when they caused turmoil you didn't felt the consequences.
(I am not against smartphone or technology, just trying to point bias and selective memory)