Today in Labor History March 11, 1811: Luddites attacked looms near Nottingham, England, because automation was threatening their jobs. At the time, workers were suffering from high unemployment, declining wages, an “endless” war with France and food scarcity. On March 11, they smashed machines in Nottingham and demonstrated for job security and higher wages. The protests and property destruction spread across a 70-mile area of England, reaching Manchester. The government sent troops to protect the factories and made machine-breaking punishable by death.
Today in Labor History February 27, 1812: Poet Lord Byron gave his first address as a member of the House of Lords. In his speech, he spoke out in support of Luddite violence against industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire. He spoke specifically against the Frame Breaking Act, which gave the death penalty to anyone guilty of breaking a machine. The state hanged 60-70 Luddites during the time the law was on the books. However, most of the time, the courts used other laws to convict them.
A Waymo spokesperson said this was a ‘one-off’ event. I’m not so sure. It may be a symptom of growing resentment against technology generally and the increasing enshitification thereof.
A Luddite is a person who wants technology to benefit the lower echelons of society (workers, low wage-earners, etc), instead of those at the top (bosses, millionaires, corporations).
And who is willing to take action to stop those top dogs from using technology to trample those at the bottom.
Giggling over folks trying to explain #luddites, neo-luddites & differences between - when they're mostly folks who are heavily addicted to new tech, never lived in anything close to luddite lifestyles, likely can't fix minor household issues, would probably flip out if they lost power over a week & think that their cellphone is more important than everyone else in their life.
#NeoLuddites are appreciative of useful tech. We don't freak out without it. We know how to survive without it.
#Luddites#Neoluddism#BigTech: "Blood in the Machine provides an engaging, entertaining, and at times enraging (in a good way) account of the Luddites. It is a book that develops a rich historical picture of the original Luddites, and that presents them in a complex and contextualized way. While no one book or author will likely ever be able to completely correct the way that Luddite is still used as an epithet (alas), it is impossible to come away from Merchant’s book thinking that the Luddites were just a gaggle of ignorant anti-technology fools. Beyond the historic Luddites, Merchant continually draws out connections between the historic Luddites and contemporary dissatisfaction with, and pushback against, “Big Tech.” Blood in the Machine is a lengthy book, and the vast majority of the book is devoted to a detailed account of the historic Luddites. And yet, in the end, Blood in the Machine is not really a book about the Luddites; rather it is a book about Luddism, and an attempt to articulate an idea of what contemporary Luddism means. This is something which becomes evident every time Merchant interrupts his historical narrative to emphasize the parallels he is explicitly drawing out between the Luddites and (for example) union organizers at Amazon. On the surface this is a book about who the Luddites were, but at its core this is a book much more interested in what the Luddites mean. Which is ultimately what makes this book worth reading and deserving of critical engagement."
"Instead of the proletariat we now have the precariat: a class of people with insecure jobs afraid to ask for pay rises or improved working conditions. And, just like the Luddites before them, workers insist that they are not against innovation, technology or flexibility, they just want some basic rights and security."
One thing in this piece on the origins of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation that I think deserves a bit more discussion is this assertion:
"...One result of this is a neo-Luddite resentment of digital technology from which little good can come..."
I have been reading an excellent book by @brianmerchant called Blood in the Machine - The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech which provides a much more robust perspective and analysis on the Luddites as a movement.
Luddites were not afraid of new technology they were fighting exploitation and subjugation and trying to preserve craftsmanship and autonomy.
Not all technology is automatically adopted by society, in fact much of the technology developed does not get the funding required to scale. Technologies are not developed in a void outside of existing power dynamics and those at the top often use these new tools to further their own ends as opposed to supporting public goods for their own sake.
New frontiers are generally the tip of the sword of colonization and exploitation. The internet has helped create surveillance capitalism and what @Snowden Snowden described as "turn-key totalitarianism".
Everyone building at the cutting edge of innovation has a responsibility to consider how their tools will be used and by whom. Credible neutrality is important in some contexts but also in a sense "neutrality" is by default support for the status quo of inequity and injustice.
True disruption must fundamentally wrestle with democratization and decentralization of power. Easier said then done given we all need funding for our projects to survive and nobody likes to lose control of their inventions. How we fund new technologies and the embodiment of the values on open source technologies that are interoperable and composable are not simple philosophical decisions, they are critical decisions that will shape the world we live in in significant ways.
The internet is indeed a new frontier but it is also just a new layer on top of the real world that can either liberate us or further subjugate us. Currently it is doing both in varying degrees and the choices we make today have profound implications.
"...the Luddites didn’t hate machines either—they were gifted artisans resisting a capitalist takeover of the production process that would irreparably harm their communities, weaken their collective bargaining power, and reduce skilled workers to replaceable drones as mechanized as the machines themselves."
#Luddism#Neoluddites#Luddites#BigTech#Automation: "After abbreviated glory in the 1810s, the Luddite brand has been revived in podcasts, TikToks, books, and picket line slogans. It has required rescue, the new Luddites say, from malign usage in popular speech. For the capitalists who crushed the original machine-breakers, and their successors in Silicon Valley C-suites of today, the Luddite became the perfect foil and eponymous epithet because he did not exist to defend himself, explains Brian Merchant in Blood in the Machine, a history of the movement published last month. The Luddites’ apparent extremism—smashing technology whose only crime was being productive—made the name a “pejorative figment of the entrepreneurial imagination,” Merchant writes, lobbed at anyone who stood in your technocratic path.
This label is as relevant now as ever, he argues. Like the Luddites who struck against machine-spun fabric and factory life, workers today are rising up against automated warehouses and gig work and AI-generated content. Behind them stand the same old merchants of progress: the likes of Marc Andreessen, cofounder of the a16z venture capital firm, who earlier this week published a “techno-optimist manifesto” labeling any and all questioners of progress as “liars.”
Merchant, a tech columnist at The Los Angeles Times who previously reviewed iPhones, joins others in arguing that Luddism is not just for loom-smashers, but for those uncomfortable with such blind faith. If you have ever wondered if the new technology arriving on your doorstep is not actually designed for the common benefit, then perhaps you too are carrying Ned Ludd’s flame."
"How to smash the looms today", a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article by Brian Merchant.
I'm a Luddite. That's not the contradiction that it might sound like. The original Luddites did not hate technology. Most were skilled machine operators. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, what they objected to were the specific ways that tech was being used to undermine their status, upend their communities and destroy their livelihoods. So they took sledgehammers to the mechanized looms used to exploit them.
The same way as the #Luddites of today. We aren't tech illiterate. Hell some of us are even #Unix#sysadmins!
The Luddites were not idiots who broke machines because they didn't understand them. They were cloth workers who once led comfortable lives, working at home or in small shops, on their own terms and schedules, with freedom and dignity.
When entrepreneurs tried to move their jobs into factories by using power looms and wide frames that did similar work faster, more cheaply and much more shoddily, the Luddites protested. These workers first sought compromise, dialogue and a democratic way to integrate new tech into their communities — to share in the gains. They were ignored. So they rebelled.
Just as people back then had their own personal websites, gopherholes, IRC and XMPP channels, Usenet newsgroups, and mailing lists, writing with passion and optimism in the early days of the internet... And some of them still exist! The optimism and excitedness for a future where everyone has the power to carve their own spaces.. Maybe not. Perhaps a few still do. And I say, more power to them!!
After reading @pluralistic 's recent posts on Luddites, I was reminded of this gem by Johnny Cash that deals with the theme of machines replacing humans.
"Did the Lord say that machines ought to take the place of living, then what's a
subsitute for bread and beans? I ain't seen it. Do engines get rewarded for their steam?"
I think they already are. I would count today’s Luddites as artists and illustrators who are starting to draw red lines, like calling on newsrooms and media outlets to ban generative AI when it’s being used for clearly exploitative purposes.
The writers and actors who are striking are doing Luddism. The writers are upset that the studios want their contracts to reserve the right to have AI write scripts. Everybody knows that the technology isn’t good enough — that they will still have to call in the writers. But guess what happens if they do that? They can charge a less-valuable rewrite fee, not the fee for writing an original script. The writers aren’t anti-technological. Most would be fine saying “Give us the power to decide how we want to use ChatGPT.”"
In Blood In the Machine,@bcmerchant delivers the definitive history of the #Luddites, and the clearest analysis of the automator's playbook, where "entrepreneurs'" lawless extraction from workers is called "innovation" and "inevitable":
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Back when I was writing on @boingbot, I'd slam out 10-15 blog posts every day, short hits that served as signpost and public notebook, but I rarely got into longer analysis of the sort I do daily now on Pluralistic. Both modes are very useful for organizing one's thoughts, and indeed, they complement each other:
.@bcmerchant's forthcoming book #BloodInTheMachine is a history of the #Luddites, revisiting that much-maligned labor uprising, which has been rewritten as a fight between technophobes and the inevitable forces of progress:
The book unearths the true history of the Ludds: they were skilled technologists who were outraged by capital's commitment to immiseration, child slavery, and foisting inferior goods on a helpless public.
#Luddites#Neoluddism#Tech#BigTech: "I test drove the first-generation Tesla Roadster. I once lived on Soylent powder shakes for a month. My Twitter account is almost old enough to drive. I wrote a book about the iPhone.
Also, I’m a Luddite.
That’s not the contradiction that it might sound like. The original Luddites did not hate technology. Most were skilled machine operators. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, what they objected to were the specific ways that tech was being used to undermine their status, upend their communities and destroy their livelihoods. So they took sledgehammers to the mechanized looms used to exploit them.
It is that spirit that I’ve come to appreciate in the age of tech monopolies and generative artificial intelligence. The kind of visionaries we need now are those who see precisely how certain technologies are causing harm and who resist them when necessary."
"The clothworkers of the 1800s had the right idea: They believed everyone should share in the bounty of the amazing technologies their work makes possible.
#Luddites#Neoluddite#Automation#BigTech: "The reason that there are so many similarities between today and the time of the Luddites is that little has fundamentally changed about our attitudes toward entrepreneurs and innovation, how our economies are organized, or the means through which technologies are introduced into our lives and societies. A constant tension exists between employers with access to productive technologies, and the workers at their whims. Clearly such tension does not always lead to violent insurrection. But then there are people like George Mellor.
So, how do uprisings against Big Tech and the machine owners begin?
When entrepreneurs and executives deploy new technologies intended to replace skilled work, confound or elude regulations, or degrade traditional jobs en masse—especially in difficult economic circumstances. It’s worse if those workers have no recourse."
Given that almost all humanity's current woes stem from around the time of the Industrial Revolution, I think it's time the Luddites were given the recognition they deserve as true visionaries.
#AI#GenerativeAI#Luddites#Copyright#IP: "The point here is not to “well, actually” Stephen goddamned King, or to try to embarrass him, but to point out why it’s so important that we understand the distinction between the myth of the Luddites — ignoramuses who smashed machines because they didn’t understand them — and the true Luddites: skilled, proud cloth workers who understood all too well how machinery was being deployed against them, and fought back. And the sentiment that generative AI is somehow inevitable is hardly relegated to bestselling novelists; it may be the predominant attitude I run into in conversations about the technology.
The reason that, 200 years later, so many creative workers are angry and unnerved by AI is not that they fear it will become so good, so powerful that they may as well up and quit writing, drawing, or acting. It’s that, like the Luddites, they are painfully aware how bosses will use AI against them. To most working authors (and artists, screenwriters, illustrators, and so on) the fear over AI is not philosophical; it is economic, and it is existential."