#luddites — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #luddites, aggregated by home.social.
-
https://labor.dair-institute.org "Today, @DAIR is releasing the Luddite Lab Resource Hub. The hub hosts case studies, resources, and political education for unions, labor organizations, and workers who want to fight “AI” and automation at work." says https://dair-community.social/@alex/116612748899480253
https://techworkerscoalition.org/ which started https://www.workersdecide.tech/ Resources to Fight AI Sloppification At Work
In New York City, the "NYC Off Tech" newsletter and in-person event calendar https://nycofftech.com/ which is how I found out about the Summer of Ludd https://buttondown.com/nycofftech/archive/summer-of-ludd-schedule/
#ai #Luddite #NeoLuddite #Luddites
[2/2]
-
"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
-
"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. […]
-
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) -
Automation was eating into #labor since the 1800s.
#luddites had a go, but were smashed.But as long as it was steam shovels and the victims were labourers, the upper classes did not have any problems replacing #labour with the machines...
... Even when specific #AI like spreadsheets and Decision support Systems were pushing folks out of jobs over the last ~30 years, everything was peachy.
But now that AI is going after white collar jobs, and we are going to see 80% unemployment, everyone suddenly is developing morality.
There were few of us, myself included warning of this as late as 3 years ago, and the folks who are posting memes now,were laughing at the #AiThreat
TLDR; #capitalism was replacing labour with machines for the last 225 years but there was little of class solidarity...
.. Now the machines are coming for us and there is no labor masses to help us. -
"The challenge, then, isn’t just understanding where A.I. is headed—it’s shaping its direction before the choices narrow. As an example of A.I.’s potential to play a socially productive role, Autor pointed to health care, now the largest employment sector in the U.S. If nurse practitioners were supported by well-designed A.I. systems, he said, they could take on a broader range of diagnostic and treatment responsibilities, easing the country’s shortage of M.D.s and lowering health-care costs. Similar opportunities exist in other fields, such as education and law, he argued. “The problem in the economy right now is that much of the most valuable work involves expert decision-making, monopolized by highly educated professionals who aren’t necessarily becoming more productive,” he said. “The result is that everyone pays a lot for education, health care, legal services, and design work. That’s fine for those of us providing these services—we pay high prices, but we also earn high wages. But many people only consume these services. They’re on the losing end.”
If A.I. were designed to augment human expertise rather than replace it, it could promote broader economic gains and reduce inequality by providing opportunities for middle-skill work, Autor said. His great concern, however, is that A.I. is not being developed with this goal in mind. Instead of designing systems that empower human workers in real-world environments—such as urgent-care centers—A.I. developers focus on optimizing performance against narrowly defined data sets."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/how-to-survive-the-ai-revolution
#AI #GenerativeAI #Automation #Productivity #Luddites #Neoluddism #Unemployment
-
Now in College, #LudditeTeens Still Don’t Want Your Likes
Three years after starting a club meant to fight #SocialMedia’s grip on young people, many original members are holding firm and gaining new converts.
By Alex Vadukul
Jan. 30, 2025"Biruk Watling, a college sophomore wearing a baggy coat and purple fingerless gloves, walked the chilly campus of Temple University in #Philadelphia on a recent afternoon to recruit new members to her club.
She taped a flier to a pole: '#JoinTheLudditeClub For #MeaningfulConnections.' Down the block, she posted another one: 'Do You Desire a Healthier Relationship With Technology, Especially Social Media? The Luddite Club Welcomes You and Your Ideas.'"When a student approached, Ms. Watling dove into her pitch.
"'Our club promotes #ConsciousConsumption of #technology,' she said. 'We’re for #HumanConnection. I’m one of the first members of the original Luddite Club in #Brooklyn. Now I’m trying to start it in #Philly.
"She pulled out a #FlipPhone, mystifying her recruit.
"'We use these,' she said. 'This has been the most freeing experience of my life.'
If Ms. Watling had a missionary’s zeal, it was because she wasn’t just promoting a student club, but an approach to modern life that profoundly changed her two years ago, when she helped form the Luddite Club as a high school student in New York."But that was then, back when things were simpler, before she had embarked on the more independent life of a college student and found herself having to navigate QR codes, two-factor-identification logins, dating apps and other digital staples of campus life.
"The #LudditeClub was the subject of an article I wrote in 2022 — a story that, ironically, went viral. It told of how a group of teenage tech skeptics from Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn and a few other schools in the city gathered on weekends in Prospect Park to enjoy some time together away from the machine."They #sketched and #painted side by side. They read quietly, favoring works by #Dostoyevsky, #Kerouac and #Vonnegut. They sat on logs and groused about how #TikTok was dumbing down their generation. Their flip phones were decorated with stickers and nail polish.
"Readers inspired by their message responded in hundreds of emails and comments. Reporters from Germany, Brazil, Japan and elsewhere flooded my inbox, asking me how to reach these students who were so hard to track down online. Snarky Reddit threads and think pieces sprouted. #RalphNader endorsed the club in an opinion essay, writing: 'This is a rebellion that needs support and diffusion.'"
Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/style/luddite-teens-reunion.htmlArchived version:
https://archive.ph/
#SolarPunkSunday #Nature #NeoLuddite #Luddites #LessScreenTime #MoreBoardGames #MoreGreenTime #MoreOutdoorTime #FlipPhones #MoreBooks #ResistTheMachine -
#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."
-
"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!!
-
#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."
https://www.fastcompany.com/90949827/what-the-luddites-can-teach-us-about-standing-up-to-big-tech