Neo-Luddism

Neo-Luddism is a personal world view opposing any modern technology^[1] that displaces workers and increases unemployment. Its name is based on the historical legacy of the British Luddites which were active between 1811 and 1816.^[1] Neo-Luddism includes the critical examination of the effects technology has on individuals and communities.^[2]

Reform Luddism is an offshoot of Neo-Luddism and represents a personal world view skeptical of modern technology and critical of its many purported benefits.

Views

Opposition to the adoption of technology and challenges to the notion of supposed technological progress are sentiments that are echoed across history. In Gulliver's Travels (1726) Jonathan Swift ridiculed the Royal Society, the oldest scientific society in Britain, and both Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson extolled the virtue of unaltered nature.^[2]

Neo-Luddism conjures pre-technological life as the best post-technological prospect (see also primitivism), or as Robin and Webster put it, "a return to nature and what are imagined as more natural communities".^[3] Industrial Society and Its Future (1995) is a recent expression of Neo-Luddism by Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber.^[4] The manifesto states:

"The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in 'advanced' countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilled, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world."^[4]

The more moderate Reform Luddism recognizes the many benefits of the evolving industrial society and embraces the inevitability of change while recognizing that change does not compel the uncritical adoption of new, seemingly useful innovations which may have unanticipated consequences. The balance of benefit and burden for acceptance of new technologies must be arrived at individually. The Reform Luddite movement resists the trend toward industrialization but does not reject and seeks to ensure that change does truly produce a net benefit overall.

Both Reform Luddism and Neo-Luddism express significant doubts about the nature of benefits from uncritically embracing new information technology. Neo-Luddism holds the belief that we were better off before its advent^[4] and is the opposite of technophilia, the belief that technological innovation will remedy all ills. Reform Luddism alternatively holds that an individual chooses to embrace or not an individual technology, that is to "Turn it on" or "Turn it off" and consequently may embrace technology to obtain a full, rich and balanced life.

Both also challenge the assumption that all that went before technology is redundant and to be disregarded because of its inferiority.^[4] While Neo-Luddism is a fringe movement, some of its ideas, critiques and solutions have broad resonance in contemporary culture that resonate with the more moderate Reform Luddite movement; for example, quests for a "simple" way of life.^[3]

While Reform Luddism engages change in a moderated way Neo-Luddism often expresses itself in stark predictions about the effect of new technologies. John Philip Sousa for example regarded the introduction of the phonograph with suspicion,^[4] predicting:

"a marked deterioration in American music and musical taste, an interruption in the musical development of the country, and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestation, by virtue - or rather by vice, - of the multiplication of the various music-producing machines."^[4]

See also

• Ned Ludd
• Anarcho-primitivism
• CLODO
• Deep ecology
• Monkeywrenching
• Primitivism
• On the Origin of the "Influencing Machine" in Schizophrenia

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Jones, Steve E. (2006). Against technology: from the Luddites to neo-Luddism. CRC Press. pp. 20. ISBN 9780415978682. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YwPP4pGRAwgC&dq=Neo-Luddism. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Christensen, Karen; David Levinson (2003). Encyclopedia of community: from the village to the virtual worls, Volume 3. SAGE. pp. 886. ISBN 9780761925989. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=t1geOjQ6R0MC&dq=Neo-Luddism. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Bell, David (2005). Science, technology and culture. McGraw-Hill International. pp. 55. ISBN 9780335213269. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pEcqiii4MOUC&dq=Neo-Luddism. 
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Graham, Gordon (1999). The Internet: a philosophical inquiry. Routledge. pp. 7. ISBN 9780415197496. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NDr8Fh4rNQAC&dq=Neo-Luddism. 

Further reading

• Sale, Kirkpatrick (1996) Rebels Against The Future: The Luddites And Their War On The Industrial Revolution: Lessons For The Computer Age Basic Books, ISBN 978-0-201-40718-1
• Postman, Neil (1992) Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology Knopf, New York, ISBN 0-394-58272-1
• Quigley, Peter (1998) Coyote in the Maze: Tracking Edward Abbey in a World of Words University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, ISBN 0-87480-563-5
• Roszak, Theodore (1994) The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking (2nd ed.) University of California Press, Berkeley, California, ISBN 0-520-08584-1
• Tenner, Edward (1996) Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences Knopf, New York, ISBN 0-679-42563-2

External links

• Primitivism writings archive
• Industrial Society and Its Future (The Unabomber's Manifesto)
• Insurgent Desire (collection of Neo-Luddite/Green Anarchist essays)
• Luddism and the Neo-Luddite Reaction by Martin Ryder, University of Colorado at Denver School of Education
• Stand up against the anti-technology terrorists by Gerardo Herrera Corral, Nature 476, 373 (2011)