Neil Postman,
"Informing Ourselves to Death"
"a person who believes we as a society have a responsibility
to look long and hard at the new technologies we create
before making them parts of our lives..."
(I like this definition, but it would seemingly include Bucky Fuller among the Luddite ranks -- rather a weird result)
"The term Luddite has been resurrected from a previous era to describe one who distrusts or fears the inevitable changes brought about by new technology. The original Luddite revolt occurred in 1811, an action against the English Textile factories that displaced craftsmen in favor of machines. Today's Luddites continue to raise moral and ethical arguments against the excesses of modern technology to the extent that it threatens our essential humanity."
" For centuries, with human weavers, mistakes were inevitable. Then in 1725, a French weaver named Basile Bouchon thought of a clever way to improve things. ... You might think that everyone fell over themselves to get one of the new looms. But that isn't how most people work."
"Technology that could produce everything we want with virtually no labor would, upon its introduction, immediately cause mass layoffs of workers, as businesses would adopt the technology in their own manufacturing systems. Intense legal battles over patent rights and monopoly control would pour immense riches into what has already become the High Priest Class of our society, the lawyers. Almost everyone else would join the ranks of the unemployed. The technology that could easily feed the world would probably result in mass starvation. The competitive system can produce the tools we need to create a future of freedom and enlightenment, but unless the system evolves, it will work against our using those tools to the benefit of humanity."
(Emphasis in original)
"As Newsweek recently said, in a special issue that actually seemed to be celebrating it, this revolution is 'outstripping our capacity to cope, antiquating our laws, transforming our mores, reshuffling our economy, reordering our priorities, redefining our workplaces, putting our Constitution to the fire, shifting our concept of reality.'
No wonder there are some people who are Just Saying No."
" ...the righteous forces of high tech reject as Luddite rantings any suggestion that some damage may be done on the march to the new economic nirvana. Instead of engaging in a serious national debate about the unexpected challenges created by the shift to a knowledge-based economy, they pretend that most Americans are thrilled, not terrified, by the prospect of endless, turbulent change. But soon, perhaps during the next recession, this great debate will begin in earnest: What will 30 million functionally illiterate American adults do for a living over the next few decades? What about an even larger group who are literate in only the loosest sense of the word? .... The explosion of growth caught economic forecasters by complete surprise. Why? Because imagining the future structure of an economy undergoing radical change is all but impossible. .... If an 18th century Jeremy Rifkin had asked President Washington to describe in detail the jobs that would absorb the talents of Americans about to be pushed off the land, could he have listed tractor mechanics, air traffic controllers and telephone installers?"
"... when Chase began to dig into his subject, he found that his assumptions about Kaczynski were largely mistaken. Kaczynksi's fierce vendetta against technological society, he learned, had taken shape not in the politically charged atmosphere of 1960s Berkeley, but years earlier. And contrary to the media's portrayal, kaczynski was neither clinically insane nor an inveterate loner, but merely a shy, studious man with a normal childhood and a modest circle of friends and acquaintances. In fact, Kaczynski, Chase increasingly came to believe, was in many ways average. Which led Chase to wonder— What could possibly have led him to react against the forces of science and technology with such violence? ...
Chase noted that in Kaczynkski's "Unabomber Manifesto," written decades later, many of his arguments against science and technology were nearly identical to those that had been drummed into Harvard undergraduates of the 1950s. Clearly, Harvard's "culture of despair," as Chase had come to think of it, had made a lasting impression on Kaczynski. ...
(Kaczynski's) alienation may be more profound and more violent than most people's, but it differs in degree rather than in kind, Chase suggests, from the alienation of countless other Americans. Indeed, what should be seen as most remarkable about his Unabomber manifesto, Chase explains, is not that it is especially unique or brilliant -- Chase argues that it is neither of those things -- but that it is 'a compendium of philosophical and environmental clichés that expresses concerns shared by millions of Americans'."