Actual 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 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.
What do I mean by that? No one knows. But it's provocative -- it gets the comments going!
(despite being a dumb comment, this is my attempt to express the serious point that Luddism is a beautiful, admirable movement, and we are in a position where it can and will be redefined completely to fit this new world; don't let anyone convince you that their Luddism is the only true Luddism, at least not yet!)
In 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.
I 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.
Water main valve robot, Flume water usage sensor, and Eve water sensors near supply lines is super reassuring when traveling or out of the house. So is having a electrical panel that I can check if the oven really was off.
My favorite is a notebook and pen. I tried all ways to write notes digitally and it only adds stress and friction for me. No batteries to charge, no files to backup, no bluetooth to sync.
Ugh. Writing with pens has always been so uncomfortable for me. (Yes, I've tried good quality pens and different writing techniques.) Typing on a keyboard is so much faster and easier.
Same. I usually sketch diagrams and jot down quick pieces of info. Everything else goes into Obsidian normally.
Though its kind of funny, with my frequent use of agents, my communication skills and ability to articulate ideas has improved quite a bit, so now I use voice dictation a lot more and it's beginning to be faster than keyboard.
This 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.
What 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.
I 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.
I 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.
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[ 0.17 ms ] story [ 18.1 ms ] threadMeme luddite: hate technology
Both are stupid misrepresentations of the movement.
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.
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.
What do I mean by that? No one knows. But it's provocative -- it gets the comments going!
(despite being a dumb comment, this is my attempt to express the serious point that Luddism is a beautiful, admirable movement, and we are in a position where it can and will be redefined completely to fit this new world; don't let anyone convince you that their Luddism is the only true Luddism, at least not yet!)
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
2. https://a.co/d/02kdlV3p
- Supernote by Ratta https://supernote.com
- Air Lab by Networked Artifacts https://networkedartifacts.com
- Xteink X4 (or equivalent) 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
- 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.
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.
Water main valve robot, Flume water usage sensor, and Eve water sensors near supply lines is super reassuring when traveling or out of the house. So is having a electrical panel that I can check if the oven really was off.
Though its kind of funny, with my frequent use of agents, my communication skills and ability to articulate ideas has improved quite a bit, so now I use voice dictation a lot more and it's beginning to be faster than keyboard.
- Playdate (https://play.date) - fun little portable console with an rLCD screen
- Daylight (https://daylight.computer) rLCD paper-like tablet
- Envy (https://envynote.app) - Obsidian without the plugins, local only
- dumb phone (https://dumbphone.so) - make your iPhone dumber, on purpose
- xteink x4 pro (https://www.xteink.com/products/xteink-x4-pro-pocket-ereader) - great, small reader
hope people enjoy!
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.
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.