History and Appliances: The Case for Luddism

Tags: Why I hate our freedoms, built environmentalism, hail King Ludd.

So. What was the point of the dystopic little reverie in my last post? Do I hate the idea of history appliances? Do I hate technology? Am I a Luddite?

Answers: No. No. No. And/or yes. I certainly don’t hate technology, and I actually love the idea of history appliances: of smart objects that know their own history, of historians thinking beyond the production of texts and into the physical realm, of media devices that allow ordinary people access to the riches of the past, from the Bayeux Tapestry to “Cowboy George.”

The question of Luddism is a little more complicated. The “self-proclaimed Luddites” Bill describes annoy me too. It’s a self-deprecating label that really isn’t; it reminds me of people who are too pleased to tell you they don’t own a TV. But the original Luddites weren’t people who don’t like Blackberrys or only watch Nova at a friend’s house. They were artisans and laborers threatened with extinction by the automation of the British textile industry. In Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson shows how 19th-century Luddites smashed the knitting frames and steam-powered looms of factory owners and cloth merchants who were using automation to slash wages but spared those owners who observed more traditional customs and practices in setting rates. Real Luddism was never a fight against technology per se. It was a fight against the shift in power caused by a specific implementation of a specific technique. The Luddites’ targets were human choices, not machines.

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Cross-posted from Old is the New New. Comments welcome.