Resistance to the industrial system, based on some grasp of moral principles and rooted in some sense of moral revulsion, is not only possible but necessary … Is this invention nothing but, as Thoreau put it, an improved means to an unimproved end?
Predictor: Sale, Kirkpatrick
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for The Nation, adapted from his book “Rebels Against the Future,” Kirkpatrick Sale urges people to question technology. He makes seven key points: ”There are seven lessons that one might, with the focused lens of history, take from the Luddite past: 1. Technologies are never neutral, and some are hurtful … 2. Industrialism is always a cataclysmic process, destroying the past, roiling in the present, making the future uncertain. It is in the nature of the industrial ethos to value growth and production, speed and novelty, power and manipulation, all of which are bound to cause continuing, rapid, and disruptive changes … 3. ‘Only a people serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines.’ This wise maxim of Herbert Read’s is what Wordsworth and the other Romantic poets of the Luddite era expressed … 4. The nation-state, synergistically intertwined with industrialism, will always come to its aid and defense, making revolt futile and reform ineffectual … 5. But resistance to the industrial system, based on some grasp of moral principles and rooted in some sense of moral revulsion, is not only possible but necessary … 6. Politically, resistance to industrialism must force the viability of industrial society into public consciousness and debate … The political task of resistance today … is to try to make the culture of industrialism and its assumptions less invisible and to put the issue of its technology on the political agenda … This means laying out as clearly and as fully as possible the costs and consequences of our technologies, in the near term and long, so that even those overwhelmed by the ease/comfort/speed/power of high-tech gadgetry … are forced to understand at what price it all comes and who is paying for it. What purpose does this machine serve? What problem has become so great that it needs this solution? Is this invention nothing but, as Thoreau put it, an improved means to an unimproved end? … Will this invention concentrate or disperse power, encourage or discourage self-worth? Can society at large afford it? … 7. Philosophically, resistance to industrialism must be embedded in an analysis – an ideology perhaps – that is morally informed, carefully articulated, and widely shared.”
Biography:Kirkpatrick Sale, an author and journalist, wrote a book titled “Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution” that made him a leader of the neo-Luddites of the 1990s. “Luddites” generally believe that technological advances are an endangerment to society. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: The Nation
Title, headline, chapter name: Lessons From The Luddites
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.ensu.ucalgary.ca/~terry/luddite/sale.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stevens, Shawn