By SCOTT DEWING
Published: October 2003

Smoke, gunshots and shouting—everything was in disarray and two men were dead. No one knew for sure how this would all end, but they certainly knew why it had started: it was all because of those new power looms.

In the fall of 1811, a group of unemployed textile workers referring to themselves as “Luddites” began to break into factories throughout England and destroy the power looms, or “frames”, that were replacing their jobs. Some accounts claim that the Luddites were led by Ned Ludd. Other accounts claimed that Ludd was a fictional character, a King Ludd who lived in the Sherwood Forest and issued proclamations regarding the evils of the looms.

The attacks on factories and destruction of equipment escalated and spread. In 1812, Parliament began debating the Frame Breaking Act, which would pave the way for Luddites convicted of breaking textile machinery to be sentenced to death.

Lord Byron delivered a passionate speech to the House of Lords denouncing the Frame Breaking Act.

“The perseverance of these miserable men in their proceedings, tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious, body of the people, into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their families, and the community,” Lord Byron said.

Then, specifically addressing Parliament’s plan to make frame-breaking punishable by death, he said, “As the sword is the worst argument that can be used, so it should be the last.”

But to no avail. Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act as well as sending 12,000 troops into the areas where the Luddites were active as a further precaution. In the summer of 1812 eight men in Lancashire were sentenced to death and thirteen transported to Australia for attacks on cotton mills. Another fifteen were executed at York. In Manchester, one of the accused was a 12-years-old boy and it was reported that he cried out for his mother as he stood on the gallows waiting to be hanged. But there was no pardon and the boy was executed among men.

Sporadic outbreaks of violence continued, but by 1817 the frame-breaking movement of the Luddites had been broken. Technology changed the world and as the world changed, man changed—for better or for worse—with it.

As we hurtle into an unknown future, that Luddite past looms over us. And yet, it seems to remain unseen, unrecognized and, at best, misunderstood. In all fairness, I think the Luddites have been given a bad rap. Few people would welcome being called one because the term carries with it connotations that one has an irrational fear of technology and progress; is short-sighted and ignorant, unsophisticated and stupid.

In an 1819 article about the Luddites, James Edward Taylor wrote, “[The] riots originated in severe distress, exasperated by a short-sighted prejudice against the introduction of newly-invented machinery.”

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, Kirkpatrick Sale wrote in his 1995 book, Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age, “Understanding in an intimate way the narrative of the Luddites, we may not only dispel our ignorance of the past, we may find some necessary guidance for the future.” Sale provides eight “lessons from the Luddites,” among which is an awareness that technology is never neutral.

One of my favorite quotes about this intrinsic dichotomy of technology is by writer and educator Neil Postman: “Technological change is almost always what I call a ‘Faustian bargain’—it giveth and it taketh away.”

This brings us back to the Luddites. As always, there are a valuable lessons here to be learned from history. As inventors, users and stewards of technology, we must all get in touch with our inner-Luddite and begin to shine bright lights on the role and impact of technology in society and culture.

Too often, too much (if not all) of our energy is spent focusing on the pros of technology rather than the cons. Today, much of this is due our marketing-saturated, super-consumer society. We’ve slowly transformed from a democracy to a technocracy. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a technocracy is “a government or social system controlled by technicians, especially scientists and technical experts.” This is not to say that the very leaders themselves need to be technical experts but that the decisions of those leaders are heavily influenced by scientists and technical experts.

Technocracy is a slippery slope, but now that we’ve become used to the acceleration, we’ve gotten pretty comfortable as we slide toward the next cultural drop-off: technopoly. According to Postman, “Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.”

I am increasingly questioning whether or not our current course is a good one and whether or not the technologies being invented today will truly make for a better tomorrow. And if doing so makes me a “Luddite” in the eyes of those blinded by the flashy promises of technology, I will be honored to carry that title.