Reasons to be a luddite

Right, a quick one.

I set myself three books to read this week, then promptly read two of them in the space of twenty-four hours. So I added another two books and promptly read one of those in the space of a few hours. I started August by doing a Patreon post about the relative dearth of reading as I hit the mid-year, but it seems I’m trying to solve that in a single weekend.

Then there was an upset stomach and the discovery of Episodes, a 2011 sitcom featuring Tamsin Grieg and Matt LeBlanc, which makes a great job of utilizing the strength of both actors. And yet, oddly weird, because it feels like it should be a BBC comedy, but it’s…not.

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I spent the start of Brisbane’s lockdown rescheduling a small stack of meetings. Now I’ve spent the end of lockdown rescheduling a small stack of meetings, because my stomach was iffy enough that sitting for an hour felt like a risk.

Did some submission reading for Brian Jar, scanned a bunch of contracts to mail out to the authors, and worked on some stuff for the Patreon and the current novella. Then the proof copies of Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet arrived.

I was worried how this one would look, the whole way through putting the files together. Things that look good on screen always lose a bit of their vibrancy during the printing process, and it’s a book that relies on stark contrast and light.

Turns out I shouldn’t have worried. It’s a beautiful book. You can still preorder copies over at the Brain Jar Press website.

Now I go start work on the print edition of These Strange And Magic Things.

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Jathan Sadowski’s exhort to embrace being a Luddite isn’t the article you’re expecting if you’ve heard the term bandied around by folks who fumble with their phone. In fact, he mounts a pretty damn convincing case for re-igniting the movement in the face of the gig economy, engaging with technology critically and entrenching worker rights.

The contemporary usage of Luddite has the machine-smashing part correct — but that’s about all it gets right.

First, the Luddites were not indiscriminate. They were intentional and purposeful about which machines they smashed. They targeted those owned by manufacturers who were known to pay low wages, disregard workers’ safety, and/or speed up the pace of work. Even within a single factory — which would contain machines owned by different capitalists — some machines were destroyed and others pardoned depending on the business practices of their owners.

Second, the Luddites were not ignorant. Smashing machines was not a kneejerk reaction to new technology, but a tactical response by workers based on their understanding of how owners were using those machines to make labour conditions more exploitative. As historian David Noble puts it, they understood “technology in the present tense”, by analysing its immediate, material impacts and acting accordingly.

Luddism was a working-class movement opposed to the political consequences of industrial capitalism. The Luddites wanted technology to be deployed in ways that made work more humane and gave workers more autonomy. 

I’m A Luddite. You Should Be One Too (The Conversation)

It’s a beautiful little essay and worth checking out.