I find this type of neo-Luddism to be a strange form of gatekeeping for technologists. "Back-in-my-day"-ism for Google and manpages and the computer mouse.
I think "Neo-Luddism" is a very poor description of people who are against Google Glass. The original Luddites were against modern machinery because it destroyed their ability to make a living with the skills that they had. The opponents of Google Glass think that this technology is an invasion of their privacy, which has nothing to do with their ability to earn a living a feed themselves.
That sounds like a recipe for a true neo-Luddite movement (as opposed to the more common hyperbolic use of the term Luddite to mean someone who engages with technology less than we might expect).
Neo-Luddism is still opposition to a lot of modern technologies, but for a very disparate set of reasons. For example, many oppose the mass adoption of social media due to perceived mental health and social impacts. Others oppose smart phones and "screen addiction." These things can qualify as "neo-luddism" even though the opposition is not rooted in job displacement.
I've often said that I am myself becoming more and more of a "neo-luddite" but it's purely for personal reasons. I don't want to see social media or smart phones disappear as I couldn't care less about what other people do with their lives. I just find that the older I get, the less I want to use modern tech in general.
It might just be burnout and boredom. I am now middle aged and I've been coding since I was 10. I used to be extremely enthusiastic about technology but as time progresses I have less and less interest in it. The industry in which I have based my entire career just doesn't excite me anymore. Today I just couldn't care less about ChatGPT / "AI" / LLMs, Bitcoin, smart phones, video games, social media, fintech etc. In my free time I find myself doing more things like reading books, going hiking in the backcountry and pursuing craft-related hobbies like performing stage magic with my wife and partner.
I don't think it's accurate to call this a form of Luddism, when the whole point of the article is that it is specifically Silicon Valley technologists that have come to the conclusion that this tech is a net negative for children.
Agreed - One who is a "Luddite" is not, by the very definition of the word, opposed to technology, per se, but instead are opposed to "technology change" - the author does seem to be opposed to technological change - but does make some good reasons as to why he is.
I think the article may have been written half tongue in cheek - I expect if I was British, instead of just Canadian, I might have more fully appreciated the humor. Hints were as follows:
" If a burglar enters your home, you can drop your typewriter on them from above"
"To get the most out of Google Docs, you must use an arcane device known as a mouse. "
But, if you read the article all the way to the end, there are actually some parts that cause you to think about the (particularly for the ADHD among us) issue of using Google Docs as our principal text entry / editting tool (as opposed to something like "Pages" in Full Screen mode)
Please, I do wish you would think carefully before using what is
really a pejorative and potentially quite insulting term in regard to
modern tech critique. Some of the smartest people out there, who built
the digital world you take for granted today, are having (belated)
second thoughts about the social and geo-political impacts of these
creations. Heartily I recommend Cory Doctorow's recent piece about
this [1].
One could arguably turn it around and say that those "cargo-cultists"
hell-bent on ploughing ahead regardless, without pause or reflection,
are closer to the common misuse of the word "Luddite" - a kind of
straw-chewing bumpkin who lives in fear of progress. No. Progress is
the radical questioning of "progress" itself.
> We'll just have to accept the consequences of what all this new
> development has brought us and learn how to live with it
No we won't. Be careful of this "genie and bottle" fallacy. It is
absolutely the wrong attitude found at the intersection of unreasoned
defeatism, resignation, learned helplessness, and abdication of civic
engagement and responsibility. We are here, as hackers, to _shape_
the technology that runs our world, not to sit on the sidelines and
amuse ourselves to death [2].
> recreating an environment that only really worked for a small
subsection of humanity.
There's a framing error in this reasoning. The technology of Web 1.0
did not exist in limited scope because it was only suitable for a
small subsection of humanity. It was only being used by a small
subsection because that was the developmental stage of the web. One
could say (disingenuously) that at the time Web 1.0 was such a
successful technology it was being used by 100 percent of web users!
I still don't consider myself a luddite after reading this. It's thought provoking but neo-luddism has stronger ties to the anti-science movement than the author probably wishes.
From my understanding, neo-luddism doesn't separate the technology from who's using it. Social media has created a kind of communication that was once thought science fiction, I can have a meaningful conversation with a few hundred people reading my message without ever learning who I am.
That kind of tool for communication is naturally exploited by big companies but at the same time you see things like addiction recovery forums that overall are a positive good for society. The creation and iteration of these tools move too fast for society/government to meaningfully have had a discussion about it.
The author seems to be implying that a luddite today looks closer to the kind of people that join anonymous and are against mega-corporations. I think that's no longer related to technology. That's a view of requiring stronger government oversight of how tech oligopolies operate, but the reality is that it's not just tech companies that use these tools to paint a narrative.
The only way to fight that kind of control is to understand the technology yourself. I support the message but I don't believe it's a discussion about technology and so I don't consider myself a luddite or neo-luddite.
The wikipedia article about neo-luddism also paints a pretty different picture of what it is compared to what the author writes. However it seems that there isn't a strong message of what neo-luddism is yet in general and is still being developed as a philosophy.
I picked up on this a few years ago and mentioned it briefly in
Digital Vegan. What struck me while researching was that the
accusation of "Luddite" is levelled mainly against older (Boomer,
Gen-X/Z) people and comes from the same group. Whereas younger
people, glorified as "digital natives" by our older group, actually
have more critical attitude towards gratuitous connection and
consumption.
It made me realise that the mythologies of tech (an inevitable,
ubiquitous force of progress and 'convenience' that we must slavishly
follow or be "left behind") resides in my generation.
I love that in our current moment if you will, that Luddism has been reduced to a binary, with zero nuance whatsoever. Either you are FOR every introduction of technology, every automation, every convenience, every new product regardless of it's demonstrated, documented deleterious effects, or you're an extremist boomer who refuses to learn email. There's no in-between at all.
I recall a time when a popular joke amongst tech people was that a tech enthusiast was someone who had every new smart home accessory and every new gadget and used them all, and a tech engineer was someone who had nothing more advanced in his house than a laser printer and he kept a gun in the same room in case it ever made a noise he didn't recognize.
I guess we're just more enthusiastic than we used to be. I like my smart switches, but I don't like the notion of all human knowledge being only accessible to me through the filter of a word generator. If that makes me a Luddite, then Luddite I am.
I agree with you on most things, but I don't quite see it as being a Luddite. I see it as the continued divergence of the closed-source software world and the real world, the former turning into an endless treadmill of forced change sold as upgrades and massive amounts of tracking and the latter being the only world where it's possible to have enough control over your tools to get anything of consequence done. My point is, the real world isn't standing still, and I don't want it to, whereas a Luddite would.
I suppose you can call me a Luddite when the fashionable closed-source hardware/software companies declare that keyboards are now obsolete and demand everyone use touchscreens or voice.
Let's recontextualize that for you. Replace "this technology" with the mouse. No one needs a new way to interact with devices, information, etc indeed.
Holding such luddite views is your right, but the rest of the more transhumanist aligned population can and will leave you behind (and help less abled people along the way).
In that comparison, I find myself to be a luddite. It's not that the new tools aren't cool or useful. But they come with unacceptable trade-offs around ownership, and tie me into relationships with more third parties I do not want to enter into relationship with.
I suppose the market doesn't care, so I'll keep being a closet neo-luddite until all my tools are replaced with services.
It's not Luddism, because the "tech" in question here isn't technology but consumerism via consumer technology. When everything is abstracted how it is nowadays, the technological aspects are hidden from the end user. Teaching your kids to tap on a touchscreen doesn't constitute technology. Neither does knowing how to use an online search engine, or resource like, say, wikipedia. All of that an abstracted package that just happens to utilize technology on its backend, which the end user doesn't require to know or understand. All that is required is memorization, to familiarize oneself, mostly of UI elements and how all this abstraction links and works together. To be against the growing societal trend that fosters a dependency on these resources and the habits that form with them isn't to be against technological advancement.
And how are you supposed to teach kids about privacy when most consumer technology from the get-go is privacy harming? If you buy a child their first smartphone, do you tell them to not use SMS because it's plaintext, to not use any of the popular communications apps because they're owned by FB or whoever else, or to not use their phone at all because of cellular location tracking? How to you explain to them they can't watch Netflix on the TV, because the TV isn't allowed to connect to the internet to prevent it phoning home? No, convenience trumps all, and we all know the current state of things is that even if people are made aware of privacy issues, they'll disregard them if even slightly inconvenient.
There is no responsible way to "teach" consumer technology, at least not the way you mention. I mean, how exactly is the generalization "too much tech isn't good" relevant to technology? This is just common sense, it applies to everything. If kids are staying up late reading comic books and subsequently performing poorly in school, this is no different than the habit of staying up late on your phone. And, I reiterate, the latter has nothing to do with technology but with consumption. You either foster a (ever-growing) dependency in them, or you don't. And as you write, the former is inevitable, but then so is a lack of privacy, and so are the bad habits that are inherent to consumer technology.
Its not that you're a luddite - its simply that the internet went from an exuberant, wild representation of reality, to a constrained, extractive. corporate 'shop front'. All facilitated by government, which likes the data corporations provide it. And on luddites, apparently they liked tech (as do I) if it were to help them but objected to knowledge extraction and exploitative labour policies that became known the industrial revolution. There are distinct similarities to AI.
I'm sure we'll keep using the internet, but its gone from a place where real value can be found, to some corporate crap. Its equivalent to me, to walking through (pre-Amazon) busy shopping centers as a youth - something you have to do rather than because of the joy you will find there. Its a simulation of the human experience.
And this is fine. IMO the real deal has always been one's own lived experience. This is where the value is. The question has always been how to maximise that, even if we were distracted and entertained for a while.
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