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Is it time for a Luddite Renaissance?
- cyanydeez 5d agoActual luddite: prevent capitalists from using technology to destroy society. Meme luddite: hate technology
- analog8374 5d agoAmish luddite. Technology is vetted by a central committee before the public is allowed to use it.
- Citizen_Lame 5d agoCyberpunk Luddite - carries an illegal military-grade EMP grenade strictly for when the smart fridge tries to make small talk.
- esafak 5d agoI was in Amish country last week, watching in bemusement as elderly women zoomed down the street in e-bikes. I thought to myself that it was understandable given that they lived on uneven terrain. But then, I wondered, why did they choose such a place to live if they were not willing to use technology, and why did e-bikes get a pass while cars didn't?
- analog8374 5d agoit's literally whatever is approved by the central committee. which is actually pretty smart when you think about it
- ahazred8ta 4d agoTo use a car, you need to sign a contract with an insurance company. Amish don't like contracts. That's why they couldn't have cellphones until the prepaid ones came out. That's why they are mostly not on the electric grid, but can have their own generators or solar panels.
- nmeagent 4d ago> Amish don't like contracts. So they may be the last of us not to have to deal with the obnoxious plague of forced binding arbitration agreements...
- lolakutty 5d agonormie: Loves to walk on technologically advanced crutches when they have perfectly working legs...
- wartywhoa23 5d agoAn obligatory Deus Ex cinematic trailer: https://youtu.be/4-MU5MgRV6U https://youtu.be/4-MU5MgRV6U
- bbg2401 5d agoYour “actual Luddite” characterisation is just as much a meme. Both are stupid misrepresentations of the movement.
- pessimizer 5d agoActual Luddite: your employees who are going through layoffs while your profits are rising. Luddite according to the boss: somebody who is trying to prevent me from doing what I want to do when I want to do it just because there's 100 of them and one of me. The boss owns the printing press.
- piloto_ciego 4d agoThey didn't prevent a damn thing though and neither will this new crop of people.
- goatlover 5d agoThe term luddite is like the term pharisee. It's a pejorative removed from it's historical context. Actual Luddites and Pharisees would have not agreed that they were against technology or legalistic hypocrites, even though their critics tried to paint them with that brush.
- lo_zamoyski 5d ago> It's a pejorative removed from it's historical context. It utterly depends on historical context. Intelligent people understand antonomasia and eponymy. > Actual Luddites and Pharisees would have not agreed that they were against technology or legalistic hypocrites That's neither here nor there.
- bbor 5d ago[flagged]
- RobotToaster 5d agoUnfortunately I imagine your modern AI data centre has better security than a 19th century textile mill.
- frumplestlatz 5d agoUnfortunately? Are we really at the point of supporting terrorism of the “correct” political persuasion?
- Refreeze5224 5d agoWe have an 8 hour workday, and women's suffrage, thanks to "terrorism", as you call it.
- frumplestlatz 5d agoWhat social good do you intend to secure by attacking data centers? How exactly do you propose going about that?
- loeg 5d agoUh, no, those things did not arise out of terrorism.
- deleted 5d ago[deleted]
- Refreeze5224 4d agoRead your history mate. https://eghammuseum.org/terrorists-the-suffragette-arson-and-bombing-campaign/ https://eghammuseum.org/terrorists-the-suffragette-arson-and... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
- miltonlost 5d agoAre we at the point where we allow companies to just hack other companies and do nothing about it?
- runjake 5d agoIn the true sense where you're militarizing and committing acts of sabotage on others' property (so-called "monkeywrenching")? And then, getting suppressed and eradicated/killed by the government? No. I prefer the "Calm Technology"[1] approach as espoused by Amber Case[2]. I think this is the saner path forward. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calm_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calm_technology 2. https://a.co/d/02kdlV3p https://a.co/d/02kdlV3p
- philips 5d agoWhat are some of your favorite devices/software that follow this idea? I can list mine: - Supernote by Ratta https://supernote.com https://supernote.com - Air Lab by Networked Artifacts https://networkedartifacts.com https://networkedartifacts.com - Xteink X4 (or equivalent) https://www.xteink.com https://www.xteink.com - Zeroink Writer - my kids use it to practice typing and write letters I can print out. Essentially digital typewriter. https://www.crowdsupply.com/zerowriter/zerowriter-ink https://www.crowdsupply.com/zerowriter/zerowriter-ink - Readwise - enables me to review highlighted passages and ideas from things I read - Obsidian - I dump text files into it, it syncs it around for me to review or edit.
- runjake 5d agoI love and use a few of those products and would agree, but I think a bigger component is our relationship to technology. IMHO, calm technology is both a property of a product and a way of relating to a product. And I think it's quite personal. For example, digital note-taking tablets are anything but calm for me (but I recognize they may be for others!). OTOH, I practically live in Obsidian. I ask myself: - Can I have a calm relationship with this product? - Does the product respect my agency? Can I decide when and how this technology enters my attention? - Is it configurable? Can I turn off notifications, feeds, recommendations, badges, autoplay, algorithmic prompts, and so one, without crippling the useful parts? - Is it intentional? Can I open it to get something done and then leave, rather than being pulled into continued use? - Does it improve my well-being? Am I generally better off? Am I more informed, capable, connected, productive, or am I merely more stimulated (eg. dopamine)? Some other perhaps non-sexy products: Amazon Echo Dot, my various air sensors, my more reliable home automation components that are already setup and just work, my Kindle and Xteink.
- orbital-decay 5d agoThis word has lost any meaning, if anything the current anti-tech wave is far closer to Amish views (subjective vetoing of new tech to avoid centralization and preserve the way of life) than to historical Luddism.
- lo_zamoyski 5d agoWhat I find interesting is how the tone seems to have changed in swathes of tech industry. Until LLMs were a thing, techno-optimism and sola technologia fundamentalism seems to have been a more prominent fetish. When LLMs began having a practical and tangible effect, much of the same cohort seems to have pivoted toward aversion. If this is true—and this perception could be an artifact of selection bias driven by those with the loudest voices, though I strongly suspect it is not that entirely—then it cannot be denied how self-serving it is. Sure, we can automate away all sorts of jobs, confident that our own is the only constant and the one thing that would survive automation. But then, the cunning of reality cut down that hubris. Of course, I do think technology ought to be adopted with prudence and wisdom. We must always remember the purpose of technology which is serving the objective human good, but to be able to do that requires more than narrow technical savvy. You need a wise and substantive grasp of the broader context within which technology is located.
- deleted 5d ago[deleted]
- minamete 4d agoI would argue the decline of techno-optimism started long before LLMs became widespread. If you think back to the late 2010s, the first bricks were starting to fall already (Cambridge analytica, Google’s 2018 … thing). Crypto, NFTs, Web3, etc were held with general negative regard in the beginning of the 2020s, and the tech CEOs like Musk/Zuckerberg/Bezos had all accumulated negative image by then.
- ssttoo 5d agoFor rethinking the Luddite movement I recommend the book Blood in the Machine (I think I learned about it here on HN)
- lubujackson 5d agoI remember reading about how the Amish operate. We treat them as a quaint, anti-progress cult of sorts, but they have a process where they consider new technologies and determine if they are worth adopting or not. Obviously the answer is "no" most of the time, but the pattern of considering and embracing new technologies through a communal, forward-thinking process seems like a reasonable way to counter the velocity and unintended consequences of rapid progress. Of course, for this to make any sense it would need to be a global process, which seems entirely unfeasible until we've already badly burnt our hand on the stove. That seems to be precisely where we are in the process. The best path forward may be cataclysmic societal collapse that leaves just enough knowledge to rebuild carefully with newfound wisdom. But wisdom is a rare and unlikely commodity. More probable is a dark age where technology is akin to witchcraft. We've had our chances to stop burning coal and save the Earth, and we don't seem to be capable of that right now as a species. Maybe the better path is if we acknowledge our lack and "vibe submit" to our AI overlords, since we can't overcome ourselves in any direct way.