"Very luddite," is what each person said. And the phrase seemed to have a ring of irony. Reference number one was made to a very working-class aesthetic quality of a man. Number two referred to the sudden chicness an antique typewritter store that's been hiding in the financial district for the better part of this century. Finally, "luddite" turned up on the cover of a mainstream local magazine, cementing its buzzword of the month status.
Like all good buzzwords, people have to rely on context to figure out exactly what it means. Luddite...a person who works with their hands? A new rubberized material used to make freezer and oven-safe crockery? A sect of religious fanatics that champions the miracle of reverse cool? Almost, but not quite.
The original Luddites were bands of skilled textile workers who had been laid-off after advances in technology replaced the need for them. In reaction to being laid-off, they burned mills, terrorized the owners and then destroyed the labor-saving devices (steam looms and water-poered croppers) that cost them their jobs. The uprisings took place mainly in the Spen and Coine vallies (the center of the wool region) in England from 1811-16. In other words, Luddits were casualties of the late 18th century's Age of Enlightenment and the English Industrial Revolution.
Ned Lud was the movement's mythical mascot -- a half-witted Leicestershire boy from the 1770's who, in response to a severe beating from his father, angrily smashed his stocking frame . Poor Ned didn't break the machine to make a statement. He inadvertently became the first practitioner of Luddism. In keeping with their pro-manual labor/naive back-to-basics theme, Luddites rioted with pikes, halberds, death threats and sloppy terrorist techniques. By 1816, the government had squashed the Luddites with hangings and transportation out of the region.
It's pretty obvious why neo-Luddism is the buzzmovement of the Millenium's end: my old computer alone does the work of a master accounting squad. I can access, sort and edit files with a twitch of my little finger. Correction fluid, typewriters, long division and most cerebral organizational skills are made obsolete every time I turn this thing on. Do I have to mention what a state-of-the-art computer can do? Boot up a box with a few gigabytes of memory, and a publishing house/record lable/think tank/graphic design firm is out of business. And you can virtually hug a virtual friend via the Internet. The mid-18th century's Industrial Revolution and Age of Enlightenment, with its sudden burst of technological and human advancement, is obviously alive and well today, and moving forward at an increasingly overwhelming rate. And as technology becomes more idiot proof and more user-friendly, you'll find more and more skilled and talented people out of work. Why, my computer runs on faith alone, not brainpower. You think I know how a byte works its magic? No, and it doesn't matter. It will probably never be necessary for me to learn how a byte works. When my old computer dies, I'll just buy a new one.
We should have seen it coming -- leisure time is on the rise, and computer slackers can lounge at home, ponder the nature of man and pull in a cool fifty-thou a year without leavng their bedrooms, which is when the old biddy Luddites come to life. Not only is this the purest form of Gen-X backlash, it's a reactionary fear of fast changes masked as a hip take on retro-revolution. Luddism is putting the car in drive and trying to go in reverse. It makes that much sense.
In any case, "Kill Your Computer" bumper stickers will undoubtedly be turning up all over Gotham City. Perhaps these neo-Luddites, who would rather take a leisurely Sunday drive rather than race with the cyberspeeders on the superhighway, will be smashing screens, hard drives and middle management heads in every office and home in an attempt to slow the pace on this dehumanization. And, like the 19th-century Luddites, they'll fail. And they'll become computer literate as a result. Luddism is only a wrench in the works, a pest -- not a bug in the system. When the unemployed textile workers smashed the steam looms and torched the mills, they were attacking only the symbols of advancement, not the thing itself. The idea, once it is invented, can never be destroyed. Technology can only move forward.
Courtesy The MGD Tap Room.
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