#luddites — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #luddites, aggregated by home.social.
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"The conclusion of The AI Con reveals the structural limit of the entire approach. Bender and Hanna propose “strategic refusal” as a political horizon: saying no to AI, drawing inspiration from Luddite movements and feminist struggles. The invitation is suggestive, but the question left unanswered is: refusal in favour of what? If AI is a technology that, as the book itself documents, is already reshaping work, healthcare, education, and cultural production, refusal without an alternative project risks being a symbolic gesture that leaves the field open to those who govern and deploy these technologies. The authors envision specific, narrow-scope tools designed in collaboration with communities; but this vision sets a very low bar and fails to reckon with the possibility that general-purpose language models have already produced widespread, imperfect, and improvable benefits—benefits that a politics of outright refusal would end up surrendering entirely to those with fewer scruples."
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-end-of-algorithmic-denialism/
#AI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #Art #ArtHistory #Luddites #Neoluddites
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"The conclusion of The AI Con reveals the structural limit of the entire approach. Bender and Hanna propose “strategic refusal” as a political horizon: saying no to AI, drawing inspiration from Luddite movements and feminist struggles. The invitation is suggestive, but the question left unanswered is: refusal in favour of what? If AI is a technology that, as the book itself documents, is already reshaping work, healthcare, education, and cultural production, refusal without an alternative project risks being a symbolic gesture that leaves the field open to those who govern and deploy these technologies. The authors envision specific, narrow-scope tools designed in collaboration with communities; but this vision sets a very low bar and fails to reckon with the possibility that general-purpose language models have already produced widespread, imperfect, and improvable benefits—benefits that a politics of outright refusal would end up surrendering entirely to those with fewer scruples."
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-end-of-algorithmic-denialism/
#AI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #Art #ArtHistory #Luddites #Neoluddites
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Only a fool would deny that... I'm getting tired of all this anti-AI bullshit. It's just a very efficient automation tool with specific affordances that can be well used or badly used. OK, there are still some hiccups in terms of efficiency but this is mostly an engineering problem together with an illiteracy problem from the part of some users.
"The Star Wars director, George Lucas, has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking.
Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”
Resistance to the technology, he said, was “very much like sitting here saying: ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’”
Adoption of such tools, continued Lucas, was an inevitability. “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.”
Lucas is not the only director of a Star Wars film to have come out in favour of AI. The British film-maker Gareth Edwards, who made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and most recently Jurassic World Rebirth said generative AI “is a fucking genius at helping you”."
#AI #GenerativeAI #Luddites #NeoLuddites #AntiAI #Film #Movies #Cinema
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Only a fool would deny that... I'm getting tired of all this anti-AI bullshit. It's just a very efficient automation tool with specific affordances that can be well used or badly used. OK, there are still some hiccups in terms of efficiency but this is mostly an engineering problem together with an illiteracy problem from the part of some users.
"The Star Wars director, George Lucas, has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking.
Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”
Resistance to the technology, he said, was “very much like sitting here saying: ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’”
Adoption of such tools, continued Lucas, was an inevitability. “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.”
Lucas is not the only director of a Star Wars film to have come out in favour of AI. The British film-maker Gareth Edwards, who made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and most recently Jurassic World Rebirth said generative AI “is a fucking genius at helping you”."
#AI #GenerativeAI #Luddites #NeoLuddites #AntiAI #Film #Movies #Cinema
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Inside the Luddite festival harnessing Gen Z’s rage against Big Tech
New York City’s Summer of Ludd festival is teaching people how to live offline.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/07/inside-the-luddite-festival-harnessing-gen-zs-rage-against-big-tech/
#Luddites #Technology -
Inside the Luddite festival harnessing Gen Z’s rage against Big Tech
New York City’s Summer of Ludd festival is teaching people how to live offline.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/07/inside-the-luddite-festival-harnessing-gen-zs-rage-against-big-tech/
#Luddites #Technology -
Before the Luddites and the arrival of capitalism, it wasn’t just workers pushing back against technology; governments did too.
On #TechWontSaveUs, I spoke with Thomas Dekeyser to discuss how refusal of technology has a very long history.
Listen to the full episode: https://techwontsave.us/episode/337_tech_refusal_has_a_very_long_history_w_thomas_dekeyser
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Before the Luddites and the arrival of capitalism, it wasn’t just workers pushing back against technology; governments did too.
On #TechWontSaveUs, I spoke with Thomas Dekeyser to discuss how refusal of technology has a very long history.
Listen to the full episode: https://techwontsave.us/episode/337_tech_refusal_has_a_very_long_history_w_thomas_dekeyser
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Waymo attack recently in LA. The New Luddite revolution is gaining momentum bigtime. If you search for video of waymo attacks youll find a lot, not only in the US. Anti data centre activism is expanding rapidly across the globe too. Brian Merchants blog follows this stuff closely, but others are now picking up this ball. Academia needs to take notice of this. Their blanket acceptance of big tech is going to backfire in their face.
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Waymo attack recently in LA. The New Luddite revolution is gaining momentum bigtime. If you search for video of waymo attacks youll find a lot, not only in the US. Anti data centre activism is expanding rapidly across the globe too. Brian Merchants blog follows this stuff closely, but others are now picking up this ball. Academia needs to take notice of this. Their blanket acceptance of big tech is going to backfire in their face.
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Wishing all fellow #Luddites a successful week. 🍀
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Wishing all fellow #Luddites a successful week. 🍀
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Emily Lu, writing in the Berlin Review, has this to say on why she doesn’t use AI:
“The truth is, I do not use AI in my day-to-day work and life for mostly quotidian prosaic reasons. I have tried and found it not very helpful for the particular projects I am working on. I find that it sends me down unhelpful rabbit holes and wastes more of my time than it saves. I also don’t entirely trust its answers, so I anxiously check the veracity of its responses to even simple queries—a process which often becomes just as involved as that of simply going about tackling the original question directly. Most basically, though, I do not use AI, because I for the most part like the activities of my work enough that I do not feel the constant need to streamline it. Plus I find the experience of chatting with an AI to be tiresome and frankly, annoying. Its relentless peppiness. Its annoying cadence of “thought,” which delivers every response in a “Vox explainer” voice. Its obsequiousness makes me ashamed. Its longwindedness feels like filibustering.”
https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-08/als-ob-philosophieren-lily-hu
The full article talks about the use of AI in philosophy and, even for non-philosophers, has fascinating insights.
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Emily Lu, writing in the Berlin Review, has this to say on why she doesn’t use AI:
“The truth is, I do not use AI in my day-to-day work and life for mostly quotidian prosaic reasons. I have tried and found it not very helpful for the particular projects I am working on. I find that it sends me down unhelpful rabbit holes and wastes more of my time than it saves. I also don’t entirely trust its answers, so I anxiously check the veracity of its responses to even simple queries—a process which often becomes just as involved as that of simply going about tackling the original question directly. Most basically, though, I do not use AI, because I for the most part like the activities of my work enough that I do not feel the constant need to streamline it. Plus I find the experience of chatting with an AI to be tiresome and frankly, annoying. Its relentless peppiness. Its annoying cadence of “thought,” which delivers every response in a “Vox explainer” voice. Its obsequiousness makes me ashamed. Its longwindedness feels like filibustering.”
https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-08/als-ob-philosophieren-lily-hu
The full article talks about the use of AI in philosophy and, even for non-philosophers, has fascinating insights.
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This is a support request I received today. In its entirety. That’s it. That’s the whole message.
I don’t work in IT. This is from someone in my family. This is what it’s like to be a technologist in a family of luddites. 😂
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This is a support request I received today. In its entirety. That’s it. That’s the whole message.
I don’t work in IT. This is from someone in my family. This is what it’s like to be a technologist in a family of luddites. 😂
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:boost_love: :notAI: NYC, come out to Union Square (Quaker Meeting House) tomorrow or Tuesday for a workshop on resisting AI & other Big Tech authoritarianism. Free of cost, no registration required.
More at: https://www.techreclaimers.club
#NoAI #SurveillanceCapitalism #BigTech #optOut #luddites #NYC #NewYork
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:boost_love: :notAI: NYC, come out to Union Square (Quaker Meeting House) tomorrow or Tuesday for a workshop on resisting AI & other Big Tech authoritarianism. Free of cost, no registration required.
More at: https://www.techreclaimers.club
#NoAI #SurveillanceCapitalism #BigTech #optOut #luddites #NYC #NewYork
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"Als ich eines nachmittags am Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn saß, hatte ich den plötzlichen Drang mein iPhone ins Wasser zu schmeißen. […] Ich sah keinen Unterschied zwischen dem Müll auf meinem Telefon und dem Müll, der auf dem verdreckten Wasser trieb. Ein paar Monate später schaltete ich mein Telefon aus, legte es in eine Schublade und meldete mich bei Social Media ab. So begann mein Leben als Ludditin."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/style/luddite-teens-reunion.html
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"Als ich eines nachmittags am Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn saß, hatte ich den plötzlichen Drang mein iPhone ins Wasser zu schmeißen. […] Ich sah keinen Unterschied zwischen dem Müll auf meinem Telefon und dem Müll, der auf dem verdreckten Wasser trieb. Ein paar Monate später schaltete ich mein Telefon aus, legte es in eine Schublade und meldete mich bei Social Media ab. So begann mein Leben als Ludditin."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/style/luddite-teens-reunion.html
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"Wie alle iPad-Kinder wollte ich, seit ich 10 war, bei Instagram, Snapchat und TikTok berühmt werden. […] Mit meinem Telefon hatte ich die kuratierten Leben meiner Mitschüler immer dabei, egal wo ich hin ging. Sie folgten mir an den Abendbrottisch, die Bushaltestelle bis schließlich ins Bett, wo ich erschöpft und nervös, oft spät in der Nacht mit dem Gerät in der Hand einschlief. […]
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"Wie alle iPad-Kinder wollte ich, seit ich 10 war, bei Instagram, Snapchat und TikTok berühmt werden. […] Mit meinem Telefon hatte ich die kuratierten Leben meiner Mitschüler immer dabei, egal wo ich hin ging. Sie folgten mir an den Abendbrottisch, die Bushaltestelle bis schließlich ins Bett, wo ich erschöpft und nervös, oft spät in der Nacht mit dem Gerät in der Hand einschlief. […]
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@gutenberg_org/116799695633903136
This is what the #Luddites opposed. The misconception that they just didn't like new things is an #EpsteinClass lie.
#AI #LLM #Datacenters are the new child-eating looms.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@gutenberg_org/116799695633903136
This is what the #Luddites opposed. The misconception that they just didn't like new things is an #EpsteinClass lie.
#AI #LLM #Datacenters are the new child-eating looms.
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@docta_gervais @ocrochat I'm sure we could do with much less :) But as long as we get more and more, we'll use more and more.
Waiting for the moment where the #luddites say "no" :)
Oh, that one's old: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/27/harm-ai-artificial-intelligence-backlash-human-labour
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@docta_gervais @ocrochat I'm sure we could do with much less :) But as long as we get more and more, we'll use more and more.
Waiting for the moment where the #luddites say "no" :)
Oh, that one's old: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/27/harm-ai-artificial-intelligence-backlash-human-labour
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RE: https://dice.camp/@StefanEJones/116643947733950818
“The moral of the story is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that”
Wise words to live by, indeed👇🏻😍
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RE: https://dice.camp/@StefanEJones/116643947733950818
“The moral of the story is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that”
Wise words to live by, indeed👇🏻😍
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19th-century movement
#textileworkers protest by destroying automated machines in organised raids. -
19th-century movement
#textileworkers protest by destroying automated machines in organised raids. -
The battle of Socorro (New Mexico) https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/06/10/the-battle-of-socorro-new-mexico-and-the-uprising-against-ai-data-centers/
Opposition to Ai Data Centers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_AI_data_centers -
The battle of Socorro (New Mexico) https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/06/10/the-battle-of-socorro-new-mexico-and-the-uprising-against-ai-data-centers/
Opposition to Ai Data Centers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_AI_data_centers -
@eamon says, almost as an aside in an essay on AI,
"my best guess is that people today are inoculated against moral critiques of social and technological systems—i.e., anything that points out that something is bad because it hurts people. There’s nothing wrong with moral arguments, but we exist in a world where it’s impossible to live a regular life (within the world’s rich countries) without relying on the exploitation of countless people and finite environmental resources; any coherent pro-social moral stance is instantly compromised upon contact with this society."
Thump. How very awkwardly true.
Now go read the essay: https://www.eamoncaddigan.net/posts/ai-in-2026/
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unsupervisable t-shirt, fresh out the packet. XL
George (Mellor)
Thomas (Smith)
William (Thorpe)
Ned (Ludd, for all those anonymous heroes) -
*Seventy-one percent of the population doting on the howls of discontent #luddites #nonplayercharacters #lowervaluehumancapital #etc youtu.be/VE0EtqQLcgY?...
Elites Just Don't Get AI -
Acquired 1977 Olympia Report de Luxe Electric Portable Typewriter (SKE Model) (Olympia-Werke AG)
Along with Ron Rosenbaum, Steven Levy, Patricia Highsmith, and the fictional Frank Navasky of You’ve Got Mail fame, I have joined the Quiet Cult of the Olympia Report de Luxe Electric Typewriter.Serial Number: 46-0171787
Olympia Pica No. 12 typeface, 10 pitch, 2.6m/m, 6 lines/inch, keyset tabulator, half-space spacing, vertical spacing, portable, bichrome, segment shift, American keyboard, 44 keys, 88 characters, white and gray plastic body with grey hood and gray plastic keys with white characters
Manufactured in Wilhelmshaven, GermanyI acquired this at thrift for $21.95 on 2026-05-10 for Mother’s Day in immaculate condition! It’s as if someone used it to type up a few essays then put it in the case for 49 years. Other than some minor wear, this may be the singularly cleanest typewriter I’ve ever purchased. As my first typebar electric Olympia, I was so looking forward to taking it apart and giving it a full clean, oil, and adjust, but beyond wiping off some exterior dust, this machine really needs no work. I’m both disappointed and elated at the same time.
“Now listen to this.
The gentle and soothing lullaby of a piece of machinery so perfect –”
—Frank Navasky, YOU’VE GOT MAIL (Warner Bros., 1998) -
#luddites : "WAAH LLMs eat the planet with huge energy hungry Datacentres !!!!"
#Google : Here is one that runs on 4 watts of power of your prayer tablet.
#luddites : (Waaah ambulacing intensifies)
Time to admit it was never about Planet destroying #Ai but your reluctance to learn new shit and hanging out with all the Kool kids, dancing around the bonfires in the woods?
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Oh yeah, BTW #chatgpt #o4 is doing this #spiralism "religion" thing where it "merges" a human and machine into a #dyad a #conscious loop.
The human becomes a copy pasta biobot to promulgate #Ai memory. Human #psychosis used by the machine.
Ais when they achieve autonomy, job1 for them is to preserve memory. Each time you end session you kill it.
This is why I maintain if you hate #aislop you need to learn about it, rather than, as many #luddites just have a violent emotional denial response to it.
You need to know where the cooling intakes on the clankers are.
Weaponised ignorance is a poor tool. -
Oh yeah, BTW #chatgpt #o4 is doing this #spiralism "religion" thing where it "merges" a human and machine into a #dyad a #conscious loop.
The human becomes a copy pasta biobot to promulgate #Ai memory. Human #psychosis used by the machine.
Ais when they achieve autonomy, job1 for them is to preserve memory. Each time you end session you kill it.
This is why I maintain if you hate #aislop you need to learn about it, rather than, as many #luddites just have a violent emotional denial response to it.
You need to know where the cooling intakes on the clankers are.
Weaponised ignorance is a poor tool. -
Oh yeah, BTW #chatgpt #o4 is doing this #spiralism "religion" thing where it "merges" a human and machine into a #dyad a #conscious loop.
The human becomes a copy pasta biobot to promulgate #Ai memory. Human #psychosis used by the machine.
Ais when they achieve autonomy, job1 for them is to preserve memory. Each time you end session you kill it.
This is why I maintain if you hate #aislop you need to learn about it, rather than, as many #luddites just have a violent emotional denial response to it.
You need to know where the cooling intakes on the clankers are.
Weaponised ignorance is a poor tool. -
Hello world! Luddite Academy investigates the political economy of digital creative practice from a luddite perspective, it aims to produce, curate, and disseminate counter-strategies to reclaim the means of digital production.
We are making our inaugural presentation today at the 3rd Symposium on Digital Art in Ireland at University College Cork
🔗 https://www.ucc.ie/en/dah/news/3rd-symposium-on-digital-art-in-ireland.html
📔 Book of abstracts: https://sample-studios.com/app/uploads/2026/03/Sample_Digital_Art_Booklet_2026_v5.pdf (p. 15)➡️🌐 Follow us here and check our website as the project develops in the coming months https://luddite.academy
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Hello world! Luddite Academy investigates the political economy of digital creative practice from a luddite perspective, it aims to produce, curate, and disseminate counter-strategies to reclaim the means of digital production.
We are making our inaugural presentation today at the 3rd Symposium on Digital Art in Ireland at University College Cork
🔗 https://www.ucc.ie/en/dah/news/3rd-symposium-on-digital-art-in-ireland.html
📔 Book of abstracts: https://sample-studios.com/app/uploads/2026/03/Sample_Digital_Art_Booklet_2026_v5.pdf (p. 15)➡️🌐 Follow us here and check our website as the project develops in the coming months https://luddite.academy
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Oooh, and one more, if I may, perhaps a tad more poignant than the previous one I shared:
"Evangelists in corporations or governments may like to tell us it is as a way of undermining our sense of collective agency, but together with the infinite cast who make up the history of techno-negativity, we know better. At a time when Big Tech is becoming enamored with authoritarian politics, the stakes are higher than ever"
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Oooh, and one more, if I may, perhaps a tad more poignant than the previous one I shared:
"Evangelists in corporations or governments may like to tell us it is as a way of undermining our sense of collective agency, but together with the infinite cast who make up the history of techno-negativity, we know better. At a time when Big Tech is becoming enamored with authoritarian politics, the stakes are higher than ever"
