I test drove the first-generation Tesla Roadster. I once lived on Soylent powder shakes for a month. My Twitter account is almost old enough to drive. I wrote a book
I test drove the first-generation Tesla Roadster. I once lived on Soylent powder shakes for a month. My Twitter account is almost old enough to drive. I wrote a book about the iPhone.
Also, 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.
I work in ML and AI and I strongly believe that reduced hours, wfh and universal basic income are needed. All new technologies can help us living a better life, it doesn't make sense using them to build a worst society
Luddites weren't stupid for the problems they noticed. They were stupid for not taking the fight directly to those in power. Fighting for a better status quo should never have to involve directly attacking a company. In fact, change can happen without targeting any specific company. Leave that to specific workers and unions.
The solution is to empower workers so it's not the worker themselves who has to bust kneecaps just to get paid... Destroying specific companies does less than nothing. Attacking technology does nothing but set it back. Destroying machinery pays no one
It paints workers as unjustly entitled and uppity, just like when protests turn in to riots. Does a riot mean the protest stood for nothing? No! Does the riot make many people assume the protest stood for nothing? Yes. Pick your targets wisely. More wisely than Luddites of the past.
/* they took sledgehammers to the mechanized looms used to exploit them whenever those looms were owned by employers who were felt to be exploitative of their employees.
The interesting thing is how one defines exploitative. I've seen ex-mining communities where the population moved in and grew with the industry but, since the mines closed, many had stayed in place eking by on very meager state benefits, and not traveled to find work as their forebears had. To be abundantly clear: I'm not making any judgement of right or wrong, I'm just suggesting that (at least for populations who have a right to freedom of movement) there are opportunities for a little more colour to be put on OP's canvas.
Because last I checked, moving a family was expensive and far from free. And last I checked, capitalist's were still leveraging this lack of financial freedom to exploit workers.
So, I think the authors use of language was spot on personally.
I think we're talking about two very different things. Apologies, language is a crude instrument. I should have made it more clear. I was referring to the right to freedom of movement. This concept is defined different ways in different countries/bodies of law. There's a great wikipedia article on it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement
From OP's text, I inferred that they clearly understood the luddites only smashed the technical kit of employers who the luddites felt exploited their workforce. I'm not certain that that concept of their operation would be grasped by a reader that had not heard about the luddites prior to reading OP's words.