Many of us may have felt like a Luddite sometime or another. Maybe you almost smashed your first smartphone after fumbling with it for hours. Or if you’re old school, maybe you refuse to buy a computer because your typewriter “works just fine.”
Morgan Meis’ essay “Rage Against the Machine” discusses the origin of the Luddites, their violent and destructive attack against technology, and how their rebellion was a precursor to organized trade unions. Meis states:
Futile, comic, ridiculous, dark, crazy. These are words bound up, inexorably, with what it is to be a Luddite. The dark, futile, craziness of the Luddites can’t be explained away by putting them in historical context. Proto-trade unionist pragmatists many of them may have been. But the Luddites were on a mad romp against history, against progress, against time itself.
Next time you power up that new laptop or iPad, think about the Luddites and try to imagine where we might be had they gotten their way.
