The Luddites were right. Brian Merchant’s new book “Blood in the Machine” tells the story of the Luddites, textile workers in early 19th century England who destroyed factory machines of automation. In our interview, Merchant describes the striking similarities between the Luddites’ time and our current Big Tech-dominated economy.
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.• I’m a Luddite (and So Can You!) (The Nib, July 17, 2023) – an informative and readable graphic-novel history of the Luddites, and how they’re relevant to today’s AI-driven economy.
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.