Thomas Pynchon wrote a very similar piece for the NYTimes all the way back in 1984: Is It Okay to Be a Luddite He was more optimistic back then about the potential for digital technologies to...
Thomas Pynchon wrote a very similar piece for the NYTimes all the way back in 1984: Is It Okay to Be a Luddite
He was more optimistic back then about the potential for digital technologies to remain democratic. Of course, we know now that Capitalism finds a way, and it's good to have reminders like this newer piece.
This article is a few years old but is just as relevant today. However.. That doesn't sound wildly unfamiliar (aside from the part about hangings and sending in the army). But the author argues...
This article is a few years old but is just as relevant today.
Our circumstances today are more similar to [the 19th century Luddites] than it might seem, as new technologies are being used to transform our own working and social conditions — think increases in employee surveillance during lockdowns, or exploitation by gig labour platforms. It’s time we reconsider the lessons of Luddism.
However..
The [19th century] factory owners won in the end: they succeeded in convincing the state to make “frame breaking” a treasonous crime punishable by hanging. The army was sent in to break up and hunt down the Luddites.
The Luddite rebellion lasted from 1811 to 1816, and today (as Randall puts it), it has become “a cautionary moral tale”. The story is told to discourage workers from resisting the march of capitalist progress, lest they too end up like the Luddites.
That doesn't sound wildly unfamiliar (aside from the part about hangings and sending in the army). But the author argues that
data must be reclaimed from corporate gatekeepers and managed as a collective good by public institutions. This kind of argument is deeply informed by the Luddite ethos, calling for the hammer of antitrust to break up the tech oligopoly that currently controls how data is created, accessed, and used.
A neo-Luddite movement would understand no technology is sacred in itself, but is only worthwhile insofar as it benefits society. It would confront the harms done by digital capitalism and seek to address them by giving people more power over the technological systems that structure their lives.
I don't know if this is good history and I also don't think it matters. If you're in favor of anti-trust action now, it probably has little to do with anything that happened way back then? The...
I don't know if this is good history and I also don't think it matters. If you're in favor of anti-trust action now, it probably has little to do with anything that happened way back then? The only thing you're really getting from using the word "Luddite" is a vibe.
I'm not trying to respond for skybrian, but I'll give my own thoughts. If an article gets people thinking and talking about the subject, and if it encourages people to learn more (and maybe act)...
I'm not trying to respond for skybrian, but I'll give my own thoughts. If an article gets people thinking and talking about the subject, and if it encourages people to learn more (and maybe act) because there are and have been others out there that are deeply involved in the topic, then it's more than just vibes. Sure, this article isn't very deep, but do all posts on Tildes have to be deep and intricate manifestos? The article does however link to a deeper article which itself has a set of references for further reading. If a short, casual article like this one gets people started down that path of learning more, then I think it's worth posting.
I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with vibes, but using the word "Luddite" for whatever we use it for now doesn't need the justification given in this article? Separately, I don't really trust...
I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with vibes, but using the word "Luddite" for whatever we use it for now doesn't need the justification given in this article?
Separately, I don't really trust it to give us an accurate account of what historians know about what was going on back then, like a historian would. Here's a response on r/askhistorians that might be a good place to start.
I like it better because it doesn't try to tell us whether they were good or bad, and has suggestions for further reading. So, there's at least the appearance of being more trustworthy.
I like it better because it doesn't try to tell us whether they were good or bad, and has suggestions for further reading. So, there's at least the appearance of being more trustworthy.
We need more people like Richard Stallman. He is just one Luddite but we need many more of them, especially in positions which can influence decisions in big tech and corporate IT.
We need more people like Richard Stallman. He is just one Luddite but we need many more of them, especially in positions which can influence decisions in big tech and corporate IT.
No, we really don't need more people like him. One is already too many. There are plenty of advocates of open source (even if RMS refuses to use the term) who aren't disgusting weirdo sexual...
Exemplary
No, we really don't need more people like him. One is already too many.
I'd argue Stallman, at this point, does more harm than good. The GPL was a vastly important thing to create and he deserves a great deal of respect for that. But what he mostly does now is upset and alienate people. The exact people who need to be onside. Sure, he's autistic but plenty of people are autistic and not massive dickheads about it. He doesn't get a pass for being smart with it. If anything, the opposite. He's not so stupid he can't figure out when people tell him stop handing out creepy business cards that he should, y'know actually stop doing that.
Nobody is saying we need more Eric Raymonds, and Stallman is arguably worse than ESR these days. Let's have more Tim O'Reillys, more Bruce Perens, more Michael Laufers. But dead lord no more Stallmans.
I challenge you to come up with a few good reasons why we need more people like Stallman, and how they would positively influence decisions in those fields. I highly suspect that Stallman has been...
I challenge you to come up with a few good reasons why we need more people like Stallman, and how they would positively influence decisions in those fields.
I highly suspect that Stallman has been a net negative for open source in the past fifteen or so years, probably more.
What the Luddites Really Fought Against The above is another article that tries to rehabilitate the Luddites. It sheds more light on their actions, and on the identity of the mysterious Ned Ludd....
The above is another article that tries to rehabilitate the Luddites. It sheds more light on their actions, and on the identity of the mysterious Ned Ludd.
If you want to delve much deeper, you can find The Writings of the Luddites on the Internet Archive. (I haven't read the book myself, btw.) That book appears to be the source material for this new light on that movement.
Thomas Pynchon wrote a very similar piece for the NYTimes all the way back in 1984: Is It Okay to Be a Luddite
He was more optimistic back then about the potential for digital technologies to remain democratic. Of course, we know now that Capitalism finds a way, and it's good to have reminders like this newer piece.
This article is a few years old but is just as relevant today.
However..
That doesn't sound wildly unfamiliar (aside from the part about hangings and sending in the army). But the author argues that
This article points to another one by the author (Jathan Sadowski), co-authored by Salomé Viljoen and Meredith Whittaker in Nature:
Everyone should decide how their digital data are used — not just tech companies
I don't know if this is good history and I also don't think it matters. If you're in favor of anti-trust action now, it probably has little to do with anything that happened way back then? The only thing you're really getting from using the word "Luddite" is a vibe.
What's wrong with vibes anyway? What do you have against it, other than vibes?
I'm not trying to respond for skybrian, but I'll give my own thoughts. If an article gets people thinking and talking about the subject, and if it encourages people to learn more (and maybe act) because there are and have been others out there that are deeply involved in the topic, then it's more than just vibes. Sure, this article isn't very deep, but do all posts on Tildes have to be deep and intricate manifestos? The article does however link to a deeper article which itself has a set of references for further reading. If a short, casual article like this one gets people started down that path of learning more, then I think it's worth posting.
I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with vibes, but using the word "Luddite" for whatever we use it for now doesn't need the justification given in this article?
Separately, I don't really trust it to give us an accurate account of what historians know about what was going on back then, like a historian would. Here's a response on r/askhistorians that might be a good place to start.
The Ask Historians thread seems to more-or-less corroborate the article.
I like it better because it doesn't try to tell us whether they were good or bad, and has suggestions for further reading. So, there's at least the appearance of being more trustworthy.
The article itself cites historians Adrian Randall and David F. Noble. Or are those not the right kind of historians?
I don't know, they're paywalled. Would have been helpful to quote more.
Ok, so the yardsticks have changed.
Mass politics runs on vibes though
This article reminds me of the automobile industry. They demonized walking and public transit to make more money with a new piece of technology.
We need more people like Richard Stallman. He is just one Luddite but we need many more of them, especially in positions which can influence decisions in big tech and corporate IT.
No, we really don't need more people like him. One is already too many.
There are plenty of advocates of open source (even if RMS refuses to use the term) who aren't disgusting weirdo sexual assault apologist misogynist sex pests.
I'd argue Stallman, at this point, does more harm than good. The GPL was a vastly important thing to create and he deserves a great deal of respect for that. But what he mostly does now is upset and alienate people. The exact people who need to be onside. Sure, he's autistic but plenty of people are autistic and not massive dickheads about it. He doesn't get a pass for being smart with it. If anything, the opposite. He's not so stupid he can't figure out when people tell him stop handing out creepy business cards that he should, y'know actually stop doing that.
Nobody is saying we need more Eric Raymonds, and Stallman is arguably worse than ESR these days. Let's have more Tim O'Reillys, more Bruce Perens, more Michael Laufers. But dead lord no more Stallmans.
I challenge you to come up with a few good reasons why we need more people like Stallman, and how they would positively influence decisions in those fields.
I highly suspect that Stallman has been a net negative for open source in the past fifteen or so years, probably more.
Coincidentally, I found this link on his website.
What the Luddites Really Fought Against
The above is another article that tries to rehabilitate the Luddites. It sheds more light on their actions, and on the identity of the mysterious Ned Ludd.
If you want to delve much deeper, you can find The Writings of the Luddites on the Internet Archive. (I haven't read the book myself, btw.) That book appears to be the source material for this new light on that movement.