Hating the tech is rational

It’s worth remembering the meaning of the luddites doesn’t lie in the fact that some of them were skilled machinists, somehow reluctant to rebel against the tech of the day. It’s that they smashed machines in an act of collective bargaining by riot. Emphasising a lack of antipathy towards machinery is, in part, an example of the victors writing history: it seems absurd for our heroes to counter the sweep of progress. But “progress” only reveals itself when the spoils have been divided, and wh...