Is it time for a Luddite Renaissance?

56 pointsposted 17 hours ago
by mooreds
(npr.org)

53 Comments

runjake

15 hours ago

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.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calm_technology

2. https://a.co/d/02kdlV3p

philips

15 hours ago

What are some of your favorite devices/software that follow this idea? I can list mine:

- 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.

runjake

14 hours ago

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.

philips

14 hours ago

Yeah, calm home automation stuff is the best.

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.

idontwantthis

14 hours ago

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.

nradov

14 hours ago

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.

runjake

12 hours ago

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.

runjake

14 hours ago

Same. While recognizing this doesn’t necessarily hold true for others.

softboyled

13 hours ago

My kind of Renaissance. Sign me up!

RobotToaster

15 hours ago

Unfortunately I imagine your modern AI data centre has better security than a 19th century textile mill.

frumplestlatz

15 hours ago

Unfortunately? Are we really at the point of supporting terrorism of the “correct” political persuasion?

howunfortunate

15 hours ago

We're way past it, sadly. Luigi was insanely popular for the cold blooded murder of a CEO. Hundreds of thousands of people celebrated Charlie Kirk's murder within minutes of it happening, let alone the discourse you see now, a year later. Plenty of people, even on this forum, openly advocate for "the funniest thing" happening to Elon.

Terrorism and murder are in vogue.

kelseyfrog

15 hours ago

There's a lot of folks out there with champagne bottles and party poppers earmarked for when it happens.

user

13 hours ago

[deleted]

user

13 hours ago

[deleted]

dgellow

14 hours ago

No mention of a certain president and his cultists coup-ing the government to steal an election? Definitely sounded like terrorism at the time, with clear call to eliminating a vice president and other representatives

frumplestlatz

13 hours ago

Sounds like a great reason to oppose violent rhetoric and action before it becomes normalized.

dgellow

2 hours ago

It has been normalized over the past 10y by the sitting president

GolfPopper

14 hours ago

[flagged]

user

14 hours ago

[deleted]

runjake

15 hours ago

Yes. If you're exposed to one entrenched end of the spectrum or another, you might notice the rhetoric and threats have picked up quite a bit on both sides. Language and actions are becoming more divisive and more violent.

I increasingly hear insane not-in-passing phrases like "Someone should just [commit some violent act to further the speaker's political beliefs]." Lately, it's about sabotaging data centers and killing CEOs.

And it's not just talk, this stuff starts by motivating the loonier members of a group to commit acts like mass shootings, the Charlie Kirk assassination, violence against LGBTQ people and other targeted groups, and so on.

I feel like some weird outsider, sitting in center-left.

Refreeze5224

15 hours ago

We have an 8 hour workday, and women's suffrage, thanks to "terrorism", as you call it.

frumplestlatz

13 hours ago

What social good do you intend to secure by attacking data centers?

How exactly do you propose going about that?

miltonlost

15 hours ago

Are we at the point where we allow companies to just hack other companies and do nothing about it?

canelonesdeverd

15 hours ago

Yes, money is God and companies are his saints. Keep your head down and surrender everything to them

user

15 hours ago

[deleted]

ssttoo

15 hours ago

For rethinking the Luddite movement I recommend the book Blood in the Machine (I think I learned about it here on HN)

orbital-decay

15 hours ago

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.

lo_zamoyski

15 hours ago

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.

minamete

5 hours ago

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.

user

15 hours ago

[deleted]

goatlover

16 hours ago

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.

lo_zamoyski

15 hours 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.

lubujackson

14 hours ago

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.

cyanydeez

16 hours ago

Actual luddite: prevent capitalists from using technology to destroy society.

Meme luddite: hate technology

piloto_ciego

an hour ago

They didn't prevent a damn thing though and neither will this new crop of people.

pessimizer

15 hours ago

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 boss owns the printing press.

bbg2401

15 hours ago

Your “actual Luddite” characterisation is just as much a meme.

Both are stupid misrepresentations of the movement.

analog8374

16 hours ago

Amish luddite. Technology is vetted by a central committee before the public is allowed to use it.

esafak

15 hours ago

I 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?

ahazred8ta

10 hours ago

To 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.

analog8374

14 hours ago

it's literally whatever is approved by the central committee. which is actually pretty smart when you think about it

Citizen_Lame

15 hours ago

Cyberpunk Luddite - carries an illegal military-grade EMP grenade strictly for when the smart fridge tries to make small talk.

bbor

16 hours ago

[flagged]