Luddite-Technologies

No, that isn't an oxymoron.

The image popular culture has of a luddite is one of a miserable stubborn person, someone who possess an outright hatred for technology and change. They are often spoken of as beings of a lazy life-form, a devolved human, a kind of to cave-dwelling troglodyte.

A depiction of luddites as backward and sinister beings gives permission to the masses to ignore and discredit the causes and opinions of the luddites.

Similar to (but in no way diminishing) how racist depictions of the Indigenous peoples of South America were used to further the colonial expansion of Western empires. It is yet another example of a marginalized group having their image forcefully co-opted by those in power, who seek to use this imagery for the purposes of domination and erasure.

To the parasitic factory-owners, slimy entrepreneurs, and general tech-boosters, a luddite is a harbinger of doom, a terrorist, an Antichrist to progress that must be cleansed from society.

This has been thier truth ever since the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, but this narrative could not be further from reality.

“on February 14, 1812, Ryder stood to address the House of Lords and proposed a law that would make the consequences for destroying machines much more severe. In his speech, Ryder painted the Luddites as terrorists, calling them “evil” perpetrators of “a system of riot \[that] had existed for the last 3 months, a system bordering almost on insurrection.” He did not mention that workers in Nottingham were desperate and impoverished, or that craftsmen had repeatedly petitioned the Crown and his administration for relief. Ryder said he “wouldn’t comment on the substance of the dispute,” though he did speculate that the trouble was caused by “unfortunate market fluctuations.”

Excerpt From Blood in the Machine Brian Merchant This material may be protected by copyright.

A luddite is not against technological development, nor are they against change. Luddites are in many ways greater advocates and supporters of development and change!

However unlike the Thiels, Musks, Bezoses, Andreessens, and Trumps, a luddite seeks to support technologies that are reciprocal, designed to help the many and not just privilege the few.

Machines in the late 1700's had begun to automate entire fields of expertise and cause massive unemployment and driving many into poverty. The Luddites were against these automations which were concentrating, privatizing, the crafting skills that many had spent years training to achieve mastery over.

While Luddites are not against automation outright, they saw that the efficiency-gains brought by these new machines were only going upwards toward the factory-owners; the freshly generated wealth wasn't being circulated or shared with the workers or communities.

Luddites were against machines that were "hurtful to commonality"

The Luddites were really labour-advocates fighting for a more equal and reciprocal distribution of the development of, and benefits reaped from, automation.

“The cloth workers were not only proactive, legally minded, and dogged in seeking their fair shake. They were creative, too. They recognized technology was improving—cloth workers themselves were often the ones that improved it—and were on the lookout for ideas as to how machines might be more harmoniously introduced into workplaces to benefit them all.”

Excerpt From Blood in the Machine Brian Merchant This material may be protected by copyright.

“That the cloth workers proposed some version of each of these ideas, especially what is essentially a value-added tax for automated textile technology, lands them in the annals of history as some of the earliest policy futurists”

Excerpt From Blood in the Machine Brian Merchant This material may be protected by copyright.

Knowing what the Luddites actually stood for makes the imagery depicted by the likes of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk make a lot more sense. They're scared of what the Luddites advocate for, and they are worried that more people might catch on to their advocacy.

This is why I use the term: "luddite-technologies", to insert Luddites back into the public discourse while at the same time making clear that they are not against technology.

What luddite-technologies are is not for myself alone to describe, however I would believe them to be technologies that are communally beneficial.