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PORTSIDE CULTURE

TAKING A HAMMER TO IT  
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Jeremy Hsu
October 19, 2023
New Scientist Magazine
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_ An eye-opening read traces today’s collective rage against big
tech back to the Luddite uprising the industrial revolution. _

Garment workers in Bangladesh stage a protest as part of the global
Make Amazon Pay campaign. (Photo: Photo: @NazmaAkter73/X // Peoples
Dispatch),

 

Nobody likes being described as someone who mindlessly opposes
technology and is doomed to irrelevance. So imagine how the Luddites
would feel knowing their name has been smeared with that meaning over
the past 200 years.

 

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech
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By Brian Merchant
Hachette Book Group / Little, Brown and Company; 496 pages
September 26, 2023
Hardcover:  $30.00;  Ebook:  $14.99
ISBN-139780316487740

 
Little, Brown and Company
The Luddite movement, which challenged factory automation in England
at the start of the industrial revolution, was far more reasonable and
complex than the bogeyman conjured up by governments and businesses,
writes Brian Merchant, technology columnist at the _Los Angeles
Times. In his book Blood in the Machine: The origins of the rebellion
against big tech, Merchant unspools a myth-busting historical tale
interwoven with pointed comparisons to how modern tech giants are
eroding workers’ collective rights and prosperity through an
algorithm-driven gig economy, and attempting mass automation of jobs
using robots and artificial intelligence._

Instead of naively raging against all machines, the 19th-century
Luddites were motivated by clear-eyed recognition of how some local
entrepreneurs – whom Merchant describes as the “first tech
titans” – deployed waterand steam-powered technologies such as
power looms to churn out lower-quality yarn and cloth, replacing
skilled artisan weavers with low-paid factory workforces doing dull
and dangerous tasks.

Those entrepreneurs knowingly chose to adopt automation for the sake
of maximising business profits while destroying the “flexible and
family-oriented” cottage industry lifestyle that had sustained
hundreds of thousands of weavers and their families. “If the
Luddites have taught us anything, it’s that robots aren’t taking
our jobs,” writes Merchant. “Our bosses are.”

Facing mass unemployment, workers responded with a resistance movement
focused on breaking machines with hammers. But such action only came
after years of peaceful work strikes and local negotiations with
factory bosses, along with petitions to the Crown that mostly went
unheeded.

Luddites wore masks to hide their identities during raids and wrote
anonymous warning letters signed “Geneeral Ludd” or even “King
Ludd” – essentially a “powerful nineteenth-century meme” based
on the legend of a young cloth trade apprentice named Ned Ludd, who
supposedly smashed his employer’s knitting frame before hiding out
in Sherwood Forest like Robin Hood, writes Merchant. _Blood in the
Machine traces the Luddite movement’s spread from Nottingham in
central England northwards, starting in 1811. The British government
eventually suppressed the Luddites by making machine-breaking a
capital offence under the law and using military force. Still,
Merchant finds reasons for optimism in how their actions slowed
automation in certain regions for years, buying time for political
reforms to restore some protections._

A revived spirit of Luddism may be more necessary than ever in the
21st century, when companies such as Uber and Amazon are imposing mass
surveillance and a “robotic pace of work” on millions of workers,
writes Merchant. He also points to how venture capitalists are backing
generative AI services capable of churning out synthetic images and
text in ways that undermine the livelihoods of artists and writers.

The response of modern workers has been to organise amid a growing
backlash against big tech. The first draft of this history is still
being written in headlines about resurgent labour unions and 2023’s
“hot strike summer”. Nobody is smashing up data centres with
hammers just yet – but the Luddites’ story shows how people can be
moved to violence against machines if governments and tech titans
leave them with no recourse.

_[JEREMY HSU is focused on covering technology trends involving AI,
robotics, drones and computing, and he is keen on understanding how
those trends impact both human societies and the Earth's
environments.]_

* Industrial Revolution
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* Luddites
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* Technology
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* Labor Unions
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* Trade Unions
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* AI
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* artificial intelligence
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* Computer technology
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* Big Tech
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* Amazon
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* Amazon Workers
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* Labor Organizing
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* Robotics
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