Raging Against The Machine Before It Was Cool

Brian Merchant, tech columnist at the Los Angeles Times, joins to discuss his recent book Blood in the Machine:The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech.

Brian Merchant dives right into the misrepresentation of the Luddites in mass culture – largely expressing their aversion to technology as a problem of intelligence or conservatism, rather than their actual ideology, which objected to technology’s role in increasing (rather than decreasing) labor exploitation in industrializing England. Stepping back, Merchant then contextualizes the rise of Luddism in the 18th Century, walking through the particularly rapid mechanization of the textile and cloth industries, bolstered by increasing cotton production from the slave trade in North America, and the complete alignment of the Crown with the Capitalists’ decision to leverage technological development for themselves, and against labor, consumers, and community. Next, Merchant dives into the story of George Meller to paint a picture of the climax of the Luddite movement at the turn of the 19th Century, as, despite their best efforts, the 1800s see even more anti-labor automatization, pushing their tactics from disruption to destruction, only for violent pushback from the Crown and dwindling public support to eventually crush the movement.

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