Why a workers’ rebellion in 19th-century England is relevant in the age of data extraction, gig labour and management by algorithm.

Neo-Luddism: Today, new technologies are being used to alter our lives, societies and working conditions no less profoundly than mechanical looms were used to transform those of the original Luddites. The excesses of big tech companies - Amazon’s inhumane exploitation of workers in warehouses driven by automation and machine vision, Uber’s gig-economy lobbying and disregard for labour law, Facebook’s unchecked extraction of unprecedented amounts of user data - are driving a public backlash that may contain the seeds of a neo-Luddite movement.

As Gavin Mueller writes in his new book on Luddism, our goal in taking up the Luddite banner should be “to study and learn from the history of past struggles, to recover the voices from past movements so that they might inform current ones”.

What would Luddism look like today? It won’t necessarily (or only) be a movement that takes up hammers against smart fridges, data servers and e-commerce warehouses. Instead, it would treat technology as a political and economic phenomenon that deserves to be critically scrutinised and democratically governed, rather than a grab bag of neat apps and gadgets.

  • @ClentEnglish
    1•1 month ago

    Building an alternative is pointless, it’ll just be the new thing that does the monetization.

    The solution has to be something different, not just webpage or and app but a complete paradigm shift. Something built from the ground up and designed to not be owned.

    A system where the person maintains exclusive control of their data, their interactions, their everything. In the same way that I am in control of my own person and no one can force me to take action, our digital existence must extended in the same way such that no one can touch it without our explicit permission and anyone who dares would be guilty of assault.

    I have thought of a way to do this without the backing of law that would basically replace the penalty with massive cost. A cost so high that even a government could not afford to violate it but I haven’t been able to reduce it to an elevator pitch yet…not that there would be an investment opportunity here. If built correctly its creation would not lead to an investment opportunity because it cannot be owned.