Today we’re accustomed to recalling the nineteenth-century Luddites with a smirk of embarrassment. We trot out the name of their movement to poke fun at ourselves for not having the latest tablet, for being slow on the uptake of new media, or for preserving our skepticism of self-driving cars and Meta VR. “He’s a bit of a luddite,” we might say of our colleague who “doesn’t deign to email” or our uncle who thinks he’s being spied on by his Alexa powered Ring doorbell. Most people who use the term recall it has something to do with hating technology, with a stubborn resistance to the golden dawn of the future, with an ignorant refusal to get with the times. It all seems so quaint: Silly old Luddites couldn’t see the writing on the wall, couldn’t get with the program, couldn’t adapt to change.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Georgia Writers to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.