Should we be more like the Luddites?
By Dan Krutka
In the last few days a streaming show and a blog post caused me to reflect on the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) lesson on Luddites that I co-authored with Scott Metzger. The IDM is available on the Curriculum page of the Civics of Technology site. It is built around helping students develop informed answers to the compelling question, should we be more like the Luddites? The Luddites protested conditions, most notably by smashing machines, when early industrial capitalists of 19th century England sought to replace their skilled labor with the unskilled labor (including of children) in the textile industry. In short, they sought to resist the rise of industrial capitalism and its exploitation of workers.
In our Luddite IDM, we staged the inquiry by encouraging teachers to start with two questions: Does your relationship with technology align with your values? Whose interests in society does technology most align today? Students then read a one-page summary of historical context for the Luddites and examine 12 primary sources about the Luddites we found from an old history site called Spartacus Educational. The most well known source is a rather incredible speech from Lord Byron to the House of Lords from February 27th, 1812 in which he defends the Luddites:
During the short time I recently passed in Nottingham, not twelve hours elapsed without some fresh act of violence; and on that day I left the the county I was informed that forty Frames had been broken the preceding evening, as usual, without resistance and without detection.
Such was the state of that county, and such I have reason to believe it to be at this moment. But whilst these outrages must be admitted to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that they have arisen from circumstances of the most unparalleled distress: the perseverance of these miserable men in their proceedings, tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious, body of the people, into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their families, and the community.
They were not ashamed to beg, but there was none to relieve them: their own means of subsistence were cut off, all other employment preoccupied; and their excesses, however to be deplored and condemned, can hardly be subject to surprise.
As the sword is the worst argument than can be used, so should it be the last. In this instance it has been the first; but providentially as yet only in the scabbard. The present measure will, indeed, pluck it from the sheath; yet had proper meetings been held in the earlier stages of these riots, had the grievances of these men and their masters (for they also had their grievances) been fairly weighed and justly examined, I do think that means might have been devised to restore these workmen to their avocations, and tranquility to the country.
Of course, the Luddite movement was crushed and industrial capitalism won out in the short and long term. The second supporting question for students is, how should workers and citizens protest exploitative technologies today? In bringing Luddite discussions into the present, we chose to focus on the Amazon workers who sought to unionize in Bessemer, Alabama. Students examined the following two sources:
Source 1: How Amazon Warehouses Could Shape The Future Of Blue-Collar Workers from NBC News, 2021
Source 2: 5 ways Amazon monitors its employees, from AI cameras to hiring a spy agency by Annabelle Williams of Business Insider, 2021
Without saying so in our IDM, we decided to identify modern day “Luddites” as the workers who were exploited by, and fought against, the technological changes instituted by Amazon. Like the Luddites, these workers were not anti-technology. They used technology in their work. They were anti-exploitation. Therefore, we also chose not to identify modern day “Luddites” as well-off people who decided to give up their smartphones or temporarily live with less technology in communes because we viewed the Luddites as a working class movement. In the “taking informed action” portion of our IDM, we tipped our hand even more about who view as similar to Luddites with the following note:
[Note: Students can start by reviewing the work of groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Algorithmic Justice League, Data 4 Black Lives, worker’s unions, or other people, groups, or organizations working for more just relationships with technology.]
Of course, how we should depict the Luddites’ legacy is contested as Stephen Jones detailed in his 2013 book, Against technology: From the Luddites to neo-Luddism. Maybe more than any movement against technology, the Luddites still persist in popular imagination. I was reminded of the persistence of Luddites both through a streaming show and a blog post in the last few days.
Promo image for the streaming show Upload.
I recently watched season 2 of the science fiction comedy-drama streaming show “Upload” on Amazon Prime (the irony/hypocrisy of a technology criticism show streaming on Amazon Prime is not lost on me). The show takes place in a near future (2033) when humans can "upload" themselves into a virtual afterlife. *SPOILERS* Season 1 of the show wrestles with both the ethics and economics of digital afterlife communities. The setting of the show is in an expensive Lakeview afterlife community hosted by the company Horizen. The show regularly critiques how capitalist inequality and consumerism extend into the afterlife with tiered payment plans, add-ons, and pop-up services. The first season ends with the protagonist Nathan struggling to afford to be a "2 Gig," which is the lowest class of residents. These residents only have 2 gigabytes of data each month before they are essentially turned off until their data resets in the next month. I will briefly add that the show, rather disappointingly, focuses on the more palatable anti-corporation economic inequality while presenting a post-racial mirage without structural or coded racism. I am sure this was to avoid losing white viewers who are too fragile to even examine such fictional possibilities that are already well established social problems today. Anyway, in their second season, the show decided that some group must fight against the economic inequalities produced by big tech. You can probably already guess whose legacy they drew on.
Season 2 begins with Nora joining the Ludds, a group of technoskeptical anarchists who live in wood cabins without much of what is considered modern technology. The Ludds both reject the empty promises of technology and resent the inequality it widens. During the season, some Ludds live separate from society (forming a patriarchal religious order) while others use their coding knowledge to hack Horizen’s systems. The season even shows how the main characters—Nathan and Nora—uncover a plot by a tech billionaire to shift elections by luring poor voters into uploading in swing states (again, no mention of race in suppressing the vote). In summary, the show offers two visions of the legacy of Luddites: anti-technology separatists or anti-technology hackers. To me, neither of these visions represent the working class political movement of the 19th century Luddites or the 21st century Amazon workers.
This brings me to an outstanding post by Zachary Loeb of the LibrarianShipwreck blog recommended to me this week by Marie Heath. Similar to Stephen Jones’ book, this post provides an excellent review of, and commentary about, the legacy of the Luddites. Is Luddite an insult, an identity, or an illusion? If we are to reject technology, who is “we” and what do we mean by “technology”? I recommend reading the post in full. It is excellent. In writing an IDM about the Luddites, Scott and I asked students to answer the compelling question, should we be more like the Luddites? However, toward the end of Loeb’s post, he had me questioning whether we’d asked the right question:
The Luddites were fighting to prevent a certain technological order from coming into being. That was technology in their “present tense.” But in our “present tense” we struggle not against an incipient technological order, but a dominant one.
What does it mean to be a “Luddite” when we all are deeply dependent on the technological order? Am I a hypocrite for watching a show about Luddism produced by the company which I critique in my IDM? Maybe in asking if we should be like the Luddites, we skipped past an important question: Can we be like the Luddites?
This is a reminder for teachers to encourage students to see how the Luddites position in 19th century England is so very different from the positions many of us occupy in the present. Social studies teachers often aim to provide such historical context while avoiding presentism already. Zachary Loeb (Librarianshipwreck) just provided me with a reminder. The questions with which we staged the IDM by asking students about their values and beliefs also should help put lessons about the Luddites in context. I recently spent a day asking 7th graders about their relationships with technology, and trust me, they are thinking way more critically about technology and capitalism than we often give them credit for (more on this later).
I still think our compelling question works. It can allow students intellectual space to investigate the differences between Luddites, big tech workers, and themselves. They can ask questions about power and who decides which technologies pervade our lives. At the end of his Librarianshipwreck blog post, Zachary Loeb said you need to own “up to your own relationship with technology.” The Luddites knew what they wanted. They wanted to preserve their craft, their dignity, and the economic order in which they had grown accustomed. I only seem to know what I don’t want—the exploitation, the discriminatory design, and the privacy violations. I also know I don’t want to live in the woods and I don’t have the skills to hack technology corporations.
In the end, I think the Luddites have persisted in our imagination because they make us ask ourselves a question that we struggle to answer: What relationship do I—and we—want with technology?
Featured IDM
You can find the Luddite IDM on our Curriculum page or directly make a copy of a Google doc of the IDM.
References
Jones, S. E. (2013). Against technology: From the Luddites to neo-Luddism. Routledge.
Loeb, Zachary. (April 29, 2022). “Technology in the Present Tense” – Notes from a Weary Luddite. LibrarianShipwreck [blog].