The Luddite within - revisited
I'm in bed. Confined to base. Fighting an infection caused by a rather large kidney stone that I'm waiting to pass. I came upon one of my own blogs at www.onlignment.com entitled Beware the Luddite within. Being hors de combat, unable to travel, I was struck by a sense of how important, even comforting, social media can be. So I thought I'd repost my little cautionary note here.
I think I may be a wikiphuddite! It’s a cross between a wikiphile (one who loves Wikis) and a Luddite, about which I’ll say a little more. But first thank goodness for Wikipedia. On more than one occasion it has led to the correcting of misinformation I was given at Grammar School. A history master 48 years ago taught me that the rebel who gave his name to the smashing of machines was Lobby Ludd (hence “Luddites”). Wikipedia says Lobby was a fictional character whose name was concocted from the London address of the long-defunct Westminster Gazette. The paper was situated at Lobby, Ludgate and the address was shortened for telegraphy to “lobbylud”. Wikipedia seems to me to carry more authority now.
Modern-day Luddites actually borrow the name from one Ned Ludd, who was believed to have destroyed two large stocking frames in the village of Anstey, in the East Midlands 1779. In England at the time you could be executed for breaking machines, and many ended their lives on the gallows at York. It is easy to understand why some did it under the anonymity of a cloak and a false name.
But why did the workers attack the machines? Wage cuts and the threat of losing their livelihood. What did they do? They broke into factories at night to smash hundreds of new power machines that they believed had deskilled them, and were enabling employers to use unskilled workers. All of this happened in the 18th and early 19th century. Then it was weavers who had served apprenticeships and manufactured stockings on handlooms. Now in the 21st Century it is knowledge workers, who served their apprenticeships on Pedagogy, Andragoy and Instructional Process only to find less skilled workers supplanting them on automated systems. So “plus ca change; plus c’est la meme chose.”
The wikiphile in me regains ascendance, and whispers with alarm in my ear, “But what if we lost all social media overnight?”
Well E.M. Forster raised that vision when he wrote “The Machine Stops”. If you’ve never read it then stop whatever you are doing (yes, even stop reading this blog and download it, you can always come back here later – there’s a free e-book – Google will point you in the right direction). Forster describes a nightmare world of the future in which humans have lost the ability to live independent lives. Each individual occupies a lonely ‘cell’ deep beneath the ground. Emotional, spiritual, intellectual and physical needs are served by “The Machine”. Most people are all too willing to surrender their autonomy. They deify The Machine and grant it awesome power, forgetting that Man created the Machine. The dreadful sanction for non-subservience is “Homelessness”. The title of Forster’s short novella hints at what happens at the end, when “The Machine Stops”.
I suppose in the case of “The Machine” no-one saw it coming. I don’t suppose many foresaw the arrival of Amazon or e-Bay either. Few could have predicted Facebook and even fewer might have guessed at how quickly Twitter would become ubiquitous in our daily communications. Now the Wikiphile is having his day, so let’s have a word from the Luddite.
Amazon and e-Bay are not going to go away, but where I live in Chesterfield the entire town has become overshadowed by two enormous retail developments. B&Q has an enormous distribution centre at Barlborough Links just outside the town, and a gigantic new store in the town itself. Tesco has built a massive concrete and steel superstore that occupies around 1.2 million square metres and dominates the skyline even to the extent that part of the A61 trunk road has acquired the name “The Tesco Roundabout”. So please don’t tell me we do everything online now.
But let me come to my final point. My very good friend Barry, a technophile told me last week that he was attending a “Tweet-up”. Now I’d heard of a booze-up and I was familiar with a nosh-up and a knees-up, but a tweet-up was an entirely new concept for me. And then, Oh Joy, I found out that it’s a good old-fashioned “meet-up” for Twitter enthusiasts! And you know, I couldn’t give a damn whether or not they buy it online or at Gregg’s; I thank God or The Machine or whatever power exists for the coming together of people and tea and cake. So don’t try to tell me that virtual social intercourse can satisfy all needs. The urge to meet and eat and shop and party and sing and dance and learn and even (book circles) to read together is far too strong a human urge.
I’m not “railing against the machine”, and I am strong advocate of the effective but moderated use of technology. I do still occasionally awake in a panic, wondering if we’re allowing technology to be the master rather than the servant of our humanity. Incidentally Forster wrote his story in 1909, and in case you think that’s a misprint I’ll spell it out – nineteen hundred and nine!
I think I may be a wikiphuddite! It’s a cross between a wikiphile (one who loves Wikis) and a Luddite, about which I’ll say a little more. But first thank goodness for Wikipedia. On more than one occasion it has led to the correcting of misinformation I was given at Grammar School. A history master 48 years ago taught me that the rebel who gave his name to the smashing of machines was Lobby Ludd (hence “Luddites”). Wikipedia says Lobby was a fictional character whose name was concocted from the London address of the long-defunct Westminster Gazette. The paper was situated at Lobby, Ludgate and the address was shortened for telegraphy to “lobbylud”. Wikipedia seems to me to carry more authority now.
Modern-day Luddites actually borrow the name from one Ned Ludd, who was believed to have destroyed two large stocking frames in the village of Anstey, in the East Midlands 1779. In England at the time you could be executed for breaking machines, and many ended their lives on the gallows at York. It is easy to understand why some did it under the anonymity of a cloak and a false name.
But why did the workers attack the machines? Wage cuts and the threat of losing their livelihood. What did they do? They broke into factories at night to smash hundreds of new power machines that they believed had deskilled them, and were enabling employers to use unskilled workers. All of this happened in the 18th and early 19th century. Then it was weavers who had served apprenticeships and manufactured stockings on handlooms. Now in the 21st Century it is knowledge workers, who served their apprenticeships on Pedagogy, Andragoy and Instructional Process only to find less skilled workers supplanting them on automated systems. So “plus ca change; plus c’est la meme chose.”
The wikiphile in me regains ascendance, and whispers with alarm in my ear, “But what if we lost all social media overnight?”
Well E.M. Forster raised that vision when he wrote “The Machine Stops”. If you’ve never read it then stop whatever you are doing (yes, even stop reading this blog and download it, you can always come back here later – there’s a free e-book – Google will point you in the right direction). Forster describes a nightmare world of the future in which humans have lost the ability to live independent lives. Each individual occupies a lonely ‘cell’ deep beneath the ground. Emotional, spiritual, intellectual and physical needs are served by “The Machine”. Most people are all too willing to surrender their autonomy. They deify The Machine and grant it awesome power, forgetting that Man created the Machine. The dreadful sanction for non-subservience is “Homelessness”. The title of Forster’s short novella hints at what happens at the end, when “The Machine Stops”.
I suppose in the case of “The Machine” no-one saw it coming. I don’t suppose many foresaw the arrival of Amazon or e-Bay either. Few could have predicted Facebook and even fewer might have guessed at how quickly Twitter would become ubiquitous in our daily communications. Now the Wikiphile is having his day, so let’s have a word from the Luddite.
Amazon and e-Bay are not going to go away, but where I live in Chesterfield the entire town has become overshadowed by two enormous retail developments. B&Q has an enormous distribution centre at Barlborough Links just outside the town, and a gigantic new store in the town itself. Tesco has built a massive concrete and steel superstore that occupies around 1.2 million square metres and dominates the skyline even to the extent that part of the A61 trunk road has acquired the name “The Tesco Roundabout”. So please don’t tell me we do everything online now.
But let me come to my final point. My very good friend Barry, a technophile told me last week that he was attending a “Tweet-up”. Now I’d heard of a booze-up and I was familiar with a nosh-up and a knees-up, but a tweet-up was an entirely new concept for me. And then, Oh Joy, I found out that it’s a good old-fashioned “meet-up” for Twitter enthusiasts! And you know, I couldn’t give a damn whether or not they buy it online or at Gregg’s; I thank God or The Machine or whatever power exists for the coming together of people and tea and cake. So don’t try to tell me that virtual social intercourse can satisfy all needs. The urge to meet and eat and shop and party and sing and dance and learn and even (book circles) to read together is far too strong a human urge.
I’m not “railing against the machine”, and I am strong advocate of the effective but moderated use of technology. I do still occasionally awake in a panic, wondering if we’re allowing technology to be the master rather than the servant of our humanity. Incidentally Forster wrote his story in 1909, and in case you think that’s a misprint I’ll spell it out – nineteen hundred and nine!
posted by Phil Green at 2:56 AM
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