- sbv@sh.itjust.worksEnglish3 days
a history of the Luddite movement—a group of artisans and textile workers who resisted the adoption of machines during the early years of the Industrial Revolution in England and whose resistance to being displaced from their work was met with violence by the British monarchy.
That’s a much better explanation of the Luddite movement than I was expecting.
- stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish3 days
People always assume that it is an anti-technology movement when it’s really an income-protection movement.
- brsrklf@jlai.luEnglish3 days
I mean, today a lot of people are anti-genAi just because they had enough of it making everything worse (including technology), while also being an environmental disaster, and yet there are always assholes to accuse them of being “anti-technology”.
- WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish3 days
“I’m not anti-AI. I’m anti-capitalism, anti-authoritarian, and anti-psychopathy.”
2 daysOne of the major complaints of the luddites were quality too. The (quite literal) orphan crushing machines made a lot of cloth. So much new uses for cloth were created, because no one needed so much cloth before
But it was cheap cloth that wore down much faster. It was also the birth of consumerism
There’s a lot of aspects to the struggle of the luddites that very much apply to modern issues, this aspect has been on my mind in relation to AI lately… The displaced workers aren’t the only victims, society gets worse for everyone at the altar of profits
- Diurnambule@jlai.luEnglish2 days
Should look into Mondragon coop style of company. They employed 70k people at sole time.
It’s more than just income protection. The Luddites were against the way the manufacturing capital was being used to effectively create wage slavery. They weren’t against technology, they were against a specific use case that undermined worker rights and freedoms, not just incomes. The end result of their suppression was nearly a century of worker abuse and exploitation that ultimately produced the violent conflicts with the labour movement at the beginning of the 20th century.
It’s currently looking like we’re headed back into an era where the owner class is going to be leveraging government to mass-murder their own employees to maintain their dominion over the masses.
- ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish3 days
It’s one of the opening events of the Summer of Ludd, a weeklong series of talks and activities like how to flirt and date offline, mending, and learning to fight against data centers, all focused on getting people off their phones and into community.
Somewhat paradoxically, I hope they film and post these somewhere so that people like me who can’t afford to travel can still benefit from the knowledge. Like, I know how to flirt and date offline (actually don’t know how to online) but am too neurodivergent to understand where is appropriate now beyond bars (since I stopped Honky Tonkin’ that is), mending is useful af and I could use improvement over my current skillset, fuck a goddamn data center, and I struggle to find cool things/events in my community now that everything is on facebook (beyond nature, but nature is a solitary pursuit and not conducive to meeting anyone besides other stoners, not that I’m complaining too hard but I don’t only like other stoners.)
I’m somewhat of a luddite myself, but still recognize the value of the internet in spreading information (like posting the videos of those talks) and communication (which is just packet radio assisted by infrastructure, really).
- Eryn6844@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish2 days
Tech was supposed to free us not lead us in chains. I dont know what the future holds but we need to be ready to fight for it.
