If Luddite beliefs seem a vague notion now, wait a bit. Soon they, or 21st-century mutations of them, will be household words … The real issue isn’t jobs or even the lost forests of Sherwood. It’s the unstiflable desire of human beings to create things. Some of what results makes the world astonishingly better; some is frightening to even think about. The Earth does seem to be in environmental peril, but just as many people will argue that technology can preserve and save it as argue technology will destroy it. And the notion that all the new machinery can or will be dismantled is the silliest kind of sophistry.
Predictor: Katz, Jon
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Jon Katz looks at the current resistance to new technologies and the Luddites at the dawn of the Industrial Age. Katz writes: ”Is technology a good witch or a bad witch? In this country, where faith in technology is the closest thing we have to a national religion, and in the new media culture, where belief in technology is a religion, it’s a riveting question … Americans believe, after all, that machines can do anything … yet ferocious resistance – and bitter resentment – greets much of what technology produces: Beavis and Butt-head, rap music, auto emissions, videogames, breast implants, noise pollution, intrusive hackers, TV tabloids, and sexually explicit newsgroups. This digital-age ambivalence has resurrected the specter of the fabled Luddites, rebellious village workers in early 19th-century England who tried to stop the onrushing Industrial Revolution. The term ‘Luddite’ is kicked around a fair amount, but few understand who the Luddites were. Members of a radical agrarian movement, they surfaced in Robin Hood country – Sherwood Forest, near Nottinghamshire – for 15 bloody months. The Luddites violently opposed the factories and mills whose construction ushered in the Industrial Revolution … Big mills and factories meant an end to social custom and community, to personal status and individual freedom. Having worked independently on their own farms, they would be forced to use complex and dangerous machines in noisy, smelly factories for long hours, seven days a week, for slave wages … This new kind of labor changed notions of time and introduced concepts like work schedules and hourly wages. It despoiled whole regions, including Sherwood Forest. The Industrial Revolution was, of course, much too big a train for these farmers and artisans to throw themselves in front of … If Luddite beliefs seem a vague notion now, wait a bit. Soon they, or 21st-century mutations of them, will be household words … Luddites may have accomplished little, but their name and notions endure; indeed, they’ve become a universal synonym for opposition to technology and the damage it supposedly does … The real issue isn’t jobs or even the lost forests of Sherwood. It’s the unstiflable desire of human beings to create things. Some of what results makes the world astonishingly better; some is frightening to even think about. The Earth does seem to be in environmental peril, but just as many people will argue that technology can preserve and save it as argue technology will destroy it. And the notion that all the new machinery can or will be dismantled is the silliest kind of sophistry.”
Biography:Jon Katz was a 1990s technology columnist/journalist who wrote for Wired, Slashdot, HotWired and Rolling Stone. Part of his career was spent as a reporter and editor for the Boston Globe and Washington Post and as a producer for the CBS Morning News. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Return of the Luddites: A Group of Second-Wave Intellectuals Has Rejected Digital Technology and Declared a Counterrevolution
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/saleskatz_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney