RetroFed
Inside the Luddite festival harnessing Gen Z’s rage against Big Tech
In many ways, the Summer of Ludd is political—teaching people how to get off Big Tech products, overlapping with the Luddite conference at the New School, a New York City–based university, where speakers are discussing the role of AI in the “kill chain,” a military concept describing all the steps taken before an attack. On Tuesday evening, Dan Fox, who works for a dumbphone company and hosts phone-free meetups at his Brooklyn home for other people interested in getting offline, announces his “platformless” run for president as part of the festival. But it is the desire to “defy consumption” on a personal level that animates several of the people who speak to WIRED.
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Expected better from Ars…
I’m here to watch a performance called “Luddite Recreations,” which is a history of the Luddite movement—a group of artisans and textile workers who resisted the adoption of machines during the early years of the Industrial Revolution in England and whose resistance to being displaced from their work was met with violence by the British monarchy.
The Luddites weren’t against tech.
They weren’t against the industrial revolution in general or looms in particular.
They just said that the increase in efficiency from innovations should translate to increased wages for less work hours, they’re the reason the modern world has a five day work week.
When peaceful protest didn’t work, they started destroying the most expensive machinery they could get to. And they kept doing that till the oligarchs caved.
There’s a bunch of revisionism because of that, because it worked. And the oligarchs don’t want us to remember what works
amusing because I was considering abandoning everything in this world and living a much nicer life with Amish or whatnot… religion however is my reason for not taking the plunge…
The Amish are not all that they’re cracked up to be. They’re fundamentalist religious extremists. Women and children have functionally no rights in Amish society, and the men give themselves permission to use whatever technologies they want for work.
That’s not even getting into the animal abuse…
Which lead to this weird situation of the Amish being some of the best solar installers in my area because they’ll run entire metal shops with it. Like, with proper industrial lasers, welder, brake presses, etc.
a history of the Luddite movement—a group of artisans and textile workers who resisted the adoption of machines during the early years of the Industrial Revolution in England and whose resistance to being displaced from their work was met with violence by the British monarchy.
That’s a much better explanation of the Luddite movement than I was expecting.
People always assume that it is an anti-technology movement when it’s really an income-protection movement.
GreenBeardIt’s more than just income protection. The Luddites were against the way the manufacturing capital was being used to effectively create wage slavery. They weren’t against technology, they were against a specific use case that undermined worker rights and freedoms, not just incomes. The end result of their suppression was nearly a century of worker abuse and exploitation that ultimately produced the violent conflicts with the labour movement at the beginning of the 20th century.
It’s currently looking like we’re headed back into an era where the owner class is going to be leveraging government to mass-murder their own employees to maintain their dominion over the masses.
theneverfoxOne of the major complaints of the luddites were quality too. The (quite literal) orphan crushing machines made a lot of cloth. So much new uses for cloth were created, because no one needed so much cloth before
But it was cheap cloth that wore down much faster. It was also the birth of consumerism
There’s a lot of aspects to the struggle of the luddites that very much apply to modern issues, this aspect has been on my mind in relation to AI lately… The displaced workers aren’t the only victims, society gets worse for everyone at the altar of profits
I mean, today a lot of people are anti-genAi just because they had enough of it making everything worse (including technology), while also being an environmental disaster, and yet there are always assholes to accuse them of being “anti-technology”.
“I’m not anti-AI. I’m anti-capitalism, anti-authoritarian, and anti-psychopathy.”
“I’m anti-capitalism” well the white house may grant your wish. they want to own the ai companies. you may get to live in your world where the government owns it all.
i rather have private ownership.
What you’re describing is the theorised end state of capitalism. See crony-capitalism, state-capitalism, plutocracy, kakistrocracy, kleptocracy.
You can still own private property in a world that outlaws billionaires, requires strong redistribution of wealth, and ensures every large enterprise is democratic, instead of plutocratic. Reality is not binary. But if you don’t accept that the existence of an ultra wealthy elite is an anti-democratic threat to the life and liberty of everyone — to the rule of law and social contract — you’re gonna end up in an authoritarian fascist or communist hellscape run by megalomaniacal psychopaths who don’t care about you, cut from the same cloth as each other. You can either support things that benefit the majority, or boot lick the criminally corrupt. If you choose to lick the boot, don’t be a petty little bitch and complain when the world comes crashing down around you.
artyomTech was supposed to free us not lead us in chains. I dont know what the future holds but we need to be ready to fight for it.
It’s one of the opening events of the Summer of Ludd, a weeklong series of talks and activities like how to flirt and date offline, mending, and learning to fight against data centers, all focused on getting people off their phones and into community.
Somewhat paradoxically, I hope they film and post these somewhere so that people like me who can’t afford to travel can still benefit from the knowledge. Like, I know how to flirt and date offline (actually don’t know how to online) but am too neurodivergent to understand where is appropriate now beyond bars (since I stopped Honky Tonkin’ that is), mending is useful af and I could use improvement over my current skillset, fuck a goddamn data center, and I struggle to find cool things/events in my community now that everything is on facebook (beyond nature, but nature is a solitary pursuit and not conducive to meeting anyone besides other stoners, not that I’m complaining too hard but I don’t only like other stoners.)
I’m somewhat of a luddite myself, but still recognize the value of the internet in spreading information (like posting the videos of those talks) and communication (which is just packet radio assisted by infrastructure, really).
ryan213“Edward P. Thompson’s book The Making of the English Working Class also helped to foster a new understanding of Luddism amongst the general public. According to Thompson, the Luddites were not, in essence, opponents of new technology, but rather opponents of the new economic conditions (such as the abolition of fixed prices) that were to be imposed as a result of its introduction.
The machines were not attacked indiscriminately as the supposed causes of this change. The destruction of the machines was therefore an organised and targeted form of action directed against specific owners, who were to be pressured into complying with the old regulations, whilst machines belonging to other owners were often spared. Thompson also interprets the high efficiency, purposefulness and organisation of the Luddite actions – involving up to 100 participants – as a sign of the Luddites’ widespread acceptance within their communities.”
They wanted to keep the prices fix for Textiles. So are they against the 70 or so % of People who can not afford many Clothes? Are the Luddites then part of the 10%, the opressors?! (Atleast i often hear it on reddit and Fediverse: if youre rich youre always an Opressor)
Luddites=Lunatics in my opinion. I am 20% for them, 80% against what they did.
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