If an #engineer is a #luddite, they aren't very good at #engineering.

Today in Labor History August 18, 1812: Lady Ludd led the Luddite Corn Market riot of women and boys in Leeds, England. Luddites also rioted in Sheffield against flour and meal sellers. England was suffering huge food shortages and inflation at the time, in part because of the War of 1812, which had started in June, and the ongoing Napoleonic wars. Additionally, new technological innovations were allowing mill owners to replace many of their employees with machines. In response, Luddites would destroy looms and other equipment. To try and get control over these worker outrages, the British authorities made illegal oath-taking punishable by death in July 1812. And they also empowered magistrates to forcibly enter private homes to search for weapons. They also stationed thousands of troops in areas where rioting and looting had occurred over the summer.

“Shirley” (1849), Charlotte Bronte’s second novel, takes place in Yorkshire, 1811-1812, during the Luddite uprisings. It was originally published under the pseudonym, Currer Bell. The novel opens with a ruthless mill owner waiting for the delivery of new, cost-saving equipment that will allow him to fire many of his workers, but Luddites destroy the equipment before it reaches him. As a result of the novel’s popularity, Shirley became a popular female name. Prior to this, it was mostly a male name.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #luddite #england #inflation #hunger #FreeSpeech #fiction #novel #author #writer #books @bookstadon

Here's an idea: turn off all the large language models that exist right now because it's a waste of resources and time. They use way more energy than a simple Internet search. Just have it respond to every query with "That's a great question, but what about the looming climate disaster or the ever increasing threat of nuclear war?"

I think about the Thoreau quote "Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at."

Reflect on that for just a minute.

#criticaltech #largelanguagemodel #ai #chatgpt #resist #refuse #luddite #neoLuddism

"Welcome to the future. Sabotage it", or how you too can become a #luddite. Passionate webcomic from Tom Humberstone, well worth your time.

I’m a Luddite (and So Can You!) | The Nib https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/ by The Nib ✒️ Tom Humberstone@mastodon.scot

@yukamichi Hail thee and fare the well fellow #luddite

The difference is the #ownership of the #MeansOfProduction. As long as a tiny minority of the rich owns it, the rest of us will be marching toward #shantytowns.

...unless we #SeizeTheMeansOfProduction

#capitalism #ClassWar #exploitation #luddite #technology #socialism #communism

Someone more #skilled than I am should #photoshop an iPhone over Lisa’s face…because that’s the current #phone situation. Poor little Bart doesn’t want to sleep in the clown bed :meow_puffy_big_eyes:

#tech
#luddite
#Simpsons

Revisando los cálculos de períodos manualmente, porque desconfío del algoritmo 😋
#Luddite #PSG #SleepMedicine #OldSchool

My good friend sent me this comic: https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/ earlier. A very interesting read. #luddite

The reclamation of the term Luddite is the biggest sign of how worker's rights are coming back.

https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/

#luddite #comics #workersrights

@tomhumberstone
I usually prefer plain words to #comics, but your #Luddite #comic is informative, inspiring and entertaining.
#ImALuddite #Luddism #AI #unions #WorkerRights

Excellent long-form comic on the history, present, and future of the #Luddite movement by @tomhumberstone
#Labour #capitalism #AI #SALAMI

https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

The Twilight Zone: The Brain Center at Whipple's (1964)

Several Twilight Zone episodes dealt with machines coming to life or taking over or messing things up. In this one the protagonist is a heartless company president who lays off a bunch of workers at his factory and replaces them with computers.

During the late 50s and early 60s there was a Liddite surge in response to computers that had begun to replace mechanical and electromechanical tabulating machines. The old tabulating machines required a lot of manual labor to operate and maintain them. The new computers were replacing a lot of workers, so some people were upset about it. (Of course all those jobs working with the tabulating machines would never have existed if those machines hadn't replaced the human computers and tabulators who did the calculating in the 19th century.)

Computers began to ship in larger quantities in the early 60s because they started to use transistors which reduced the costs significantly compared to the vacuum tube models.

If it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, I highly recommend a revisit of this episode with its timely narrative.

Accessible video description:

A man is watching a film with a company president talking about how a new computer is going to save the company a lot of money, the company president is a bald-headed guy with glasses wearing a suit, he is writing on a chalkboard, the man watching the film is sitting near the projector; then the guy who was in the film is now talking to the man who was viewing the film and asking him for his critique; cut to a guy who picks up a metal bar and starts hitting a computer causing sparks to fly and the bald-headed man grabs a gun and shoots at the guy hitting the computer; then a guy in a lab coat talks to the president about how bad it is now that nobody is working at the company and how empty it is and then the guy in the lab coat walks out; cut to the end title Twilight Zone.

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#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #management #labor #strike #computer #IBM #IBM1401 #severance #RobbyRobot #robot #luddite #neoluddite

(fair use clips from the episode)

@ttscoff Cool. Don’t laugh, but I sent them a paper check for $25 in honor of your birthday. You can add that to your fundraising goal. I’m just SO done with PayPal. I can’t bring myself to give them any new information. #luddite

As often happens on Mastodon, I can't find the toot where I originally got the link from, but here's a cool comic about the history of #luddites on @thenib

Read it if like me you only knew the colloquial use of #luddite

https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/

I guess I'm a woolly beast from the before-time because the near universal use of autocorrect mystifies me. Aside from not wanting the machine to correct me (if I make a mistake, I make a mistake) I cannot type a single sentence successfully with autocorrect turned on. Whatever I type gets changed into something else so I have to retype it with suggested words constantly popping up on screen... feels like I'm fighting the software when I could just type words.

#luddite #autocorrect #smartphone

Some might tell you to read about AI right now but I'm gonna tell you to read @librarianshipwreck 's #Luddite Library (if you want to):

https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2022/12/21/a-luddite-library/

A quotation from Rogers, Will:

«««««
Machines are a great thing, but if one replaces a hundred men, it don’t buy anything, it don’t eat anything, while the hundred men spend theirs back for food, shelter, and hundreds of various commodities for them and their families.
»»»»»

Full quote, sourcing, notes:
https://wist.info/rogers-will/61856/

#quote #quotes #quotation #automation #community #downsizing #economy #impact #labor #layoff #luddite #machinery #replacement #unemployment

Having played the #Luddite #LongGame for almost two decades, not buying all of them was not an option.

The price? Gone up a bit since 2010, they're now 2kr each, about 14p.

When I told the volunteer at the till how delighted I was to find them, she said we have a whole box and were worried they would never sell. "Would you like me to get the rest?"

@arclight I have files named "tricks" and "tricks.txt" strewn over all my computers they contain all the dnf apt systemctl/system/whatsitz disable firewall/selinux/crap getting into the way of everything. and ways to log in as root on the crappy passive aggressive distros out there. The only good security is a sledgehammer to the cpu #Luddite