Everyone Is a Luddite Now
Everyone Is a Luddite Now
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.
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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)
GPS is dope.
AI is dope as well. Still they all have impact on the market.
For sure they were companies relying on the tasks that gps does now to make a living. They most likely had to reinvent the business or die.
This is how market works since forever. Something is introduced, people make money out of it and push other people on the streets. It's an organizational problem, not a technological problem