Luddites get their name from Ned Ludd. He either was a worker in a
textile mill who quit or was fired, or never actually existed. When
bad things would happen at the mill, the workers would say Ned Ludd was responsible.
Later, when those same
workers were
rioting, and burning machinery, they were asked who their
leader was. it was, of course, Ned Ludd.
On a related note, Luddites kind of scare me. I realize technology can be used really badly, but relinquishment is such an extreme measure when you think about all the things technology helps us with.
And when you get down to it, most neo-Luddites are kind of fuzzy on what "technology" is anyway. is it automation? a certain level of automation? new technologies like genetic engineering? why just those technologies? Are we talking about total halting of progress? We potentially have the ability to add decades to the lifespan of people still living. and far more to those yet to be born. does anybody actually want to go back to a point where people live in nasty ass adobe houses, and only for around 40 years? i consider myself a little bit of a romantic and i love middle ages fantasy, knights, king arthur, etc. but i could never live in a place like that, knowing how much cleaner, safer, long-lived, pain-free, and frankly more interesting, this tech level is.
When you get down to it, our current era will be looked down on the same way. do you want to be the one, locking people into a way of life that will be viewed as barbaric, short-lived, violent, and sense-less? Are you that confident that these things must be stopped? Do you really like the way things are that much?
there are many arguments against certain technologies. that you'll lose jobs, people will be hurt, it's against nature, god doesn't like it, it'll be scary. it'll be dehumanizing.
my answer to most of these is that it's change. you're arguing against change, not technology. if technology loses us jobs, where is the massive upswell of unemployment, given the primacy of assembly-line manufacturing nearly a century ago? or the use of industrial robots 25 years ago? it isn't going to happen. we don't have a lot of industrial welders anymore, but we have other jobs. it's change. people hurt, when less people will be hurt in the long run, i think is a good trade-off.
Bill Joy recently said that he's willing to let children die of genetic defects, rather than face the dangers of genetic engineering. First, let's realize that genetic engineering will be developed. be serious. do you really think you can force every country on earth to ban it? for how long? a hundred years? two hundred years? what about a million years? it's coming, regardless.
Second, how do you know people will immediately run out and kill things with this? Or that God really hates it? How certain are you? Certain enough to condemn people to die? because you are. lives could be saved by genetically engineered crops. people's lives could be extended by extending telomere's, and tuning our metabolisms better. people with down's syndrome, muscular dystrophy, motor diseases, congenital heart defects; could be saved. or we could let them die. and "fight the future".
but then, that's just genetic engineering. there are other things people are scared of. and i'm just me, and it's just my opinion. but i think these sort of questions should be left to people who actually know what they're talking about. like genetic engineers, and physicists. mechanical designers, and chemists. They've managed not to destroy the world, despite that fact that we've been theoretically able to for a while now. and despite the best efforts of politicians and lobbyists to make life difficult for them, they continue to give us all sorts of neat things to play with, and continue to save more lives than any other avenue of charity. the inventor of the polio vaccine probably saved more lives and helped more families than mother teresa. probably more than the whole catholic church EVER has. and people want this to stop?
that scares me.