A few weeks ago I asked around for interest in #luddite events here in Berlin.
While everything takes longer than one likes (work and stuff) I did set up a mailing list for announcements/etc. If you want to get an email as soon as things are set up you can add your email address to https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/berlinluddites .
I can't fully commit to a date/schedule yet, but I am working on it. Forward the address to whoever you think might be interested.
@beanface42 : wowowow, elle est magnifique. Je ne savais pas que la hermes 3000 existait en aussi carré. C’est dans les 1970 ? (j’ai 2 rondes, première génération, avec son vert cultissime).
A Luddite is a person who wants technology to benefit the lower echelons of society (workers, low wage-earners, etc), instead of those at the top (bosses, millionaires, corporations).
And who is willing to take action to stop those top dogs from using technology to trample those at the bottom.
"If anything, we should stop using #Luddite as a facile insult, and use it to invoke a cautionary tale of what can happen when the specter of automation stokes fears of mass joblessness in an uneasy public—a phenomenon already taking root today."
– from @brianmerchant almost 10 years ago. Hits even harder in the "today of today"
Today in Labor History January 19, 1812: Luddites torched Oatlands Mill in Yorkshire, England. In order to avoid losing their jobs to machines, Luddites destroyed equipment in protest. Their movement was named for Ned Ludd, a fictional weaver who supposedly smashed knitting frames after being whipped by his boss. Luddite rebellions continued from 1811-1816, until the military quashed their uprising.
Chant no more your old rhymes about bold Robin Hood
His feats I but little admire
I will sing the Achievements of General Ludd
Now the Hero of Nottinghamshire.
The sentiment for this poem comes from the fact that Robin Hood was a paternalistic hero, a displaced aristocrat who stole from his class brethren and gave to the poor; whereas Ned Ludd represented the autonomy and self-sufficiency of the working class.
Luddites were people who were very skilled with machines but disagreed that those machines were used to lower working conditions under which they and their offspring would have to work.
This insightful comic shows how AI and regulations are now placing workers in the same situation.
It shows how more and more people say:
I AM A LUDDITE
"I am good with new technology and I want it to be used to benefit individual people."
"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!!
"We bring an array of tech products—say, an Amazon Ring doorbell, generative art created by Midjourney. We'll subject each piece of tech to a discussion; does it accelerate exploitation? Is it unethically made? Does it benefit society? Our tribunal will debate whether the harms outweigh the good, whether a piece of tech should be resisted—or destroyed altogether."
Today in Labor History August 18, 1812: Lady Ludd led the Luddite Corn Market riot of women and boys in Leeds, England. Luddites also rioted in Sheffield against flour and meal sellers. England was suffering huge food shortages and inflation at the time, in part because of the War of 1812, which had started in June, and the ongoing Napoleonic wars. Additionally, new technological innovations were allowing mill owners to replace many of their employees with machines. In response, Luddites would destroy looms and other equipment. To try and get control over these worker outrages, the British authorities made illegal oath-taking punishable by death in July 1812. And they also empowered magistrates to forcibly enter private homes to search for weapons. They also stationed thousands of troops in areas where rioting and looting had occurred over the summer.
“Shirley” (1849), Charlotte Bronte’s second novel, takes place in Yorkshire, 1811-1812, during the Luddite uprisings. It was originally published under the pseudonym, Currer Bell. The novel opens with a ruthless mill owner waiting for the delivery of new, cost-saving equipment that will allow him to fire many of his workers, but Luddites destroy the equipment before it reaches him. As a result of the novel’s popularity, Shirley became a popular female name. Prior to this, it was mostly a male name.
The difference is the #ownership of the #MeansOfProduction. As long as a tiny minority of the rich owns it, the rest of us will be marching toward #shantytowns.
«Most of us think of a #Luddite as someone who is anti-technology or fearful of it, but as LA Times tech columnist Brian Merchant points out in his new book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the #Rebellion Against #BigTech, they were #technologists themselves who simply questioned the ways it was being used against them.»
