multiracialunity.org/2026/02/26/b...
#TheLuddites Blood in the Machine by #BrianMerchant
The workers did not oppose the machines. They opposed the way the owners used them. Instead of making production easier, these early capitalists used them to reduce employment and increase their profits.
"It may be dystopian, but you still get to talk to Scarlett Johansson!" - BRIAN MERCHANT, Inside The AI Jobs Crisis ft. Brian Merchant, The Study Hall Podcast #StudyHallPodcast #ScarlettJohansson #HappyBirthdayScarlettJohansson #BrianMerchant
Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant’s seminal history of the Luddite movement, was published 2 years ago TODAY (9/26/2023). Today, we're happy to reprint an important excerpt (with permission). #BloodMachine #BrianMerchant #AI #Luddite #Tech #NedLudd
www.humanintelligence.news/p/book-excer...
Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against #BigTech by #BrianMerchant is an early contender for best and most important book I’ve read in 2024. (Here’s last year’s list, if you’re interested: doncurren.blogspot.com/2024/01/nine...)
“If the #Luddites have taught us anything, it’s that #robots aren’t taking our jobs. Our bosses are.” - #BrianMerchant, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against #BigTech
“If we are ingenious enough to automate large-scale production, build spacecraft & invent artificial intelligence, are we not ingenious enough to ensure that advancing #technology benefits all, and not just a few?” - #BrianMerchant, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against #BigTech
“ #Automation and workplace #technology often don’t result in less #work, but more diffuse, #precarious and lower-paying or less-protected work.” - #BrianMerchant, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against #BigTech.
"Starting almost immediately upon the #Luddites' emergence, philosophical critiques of, and even outright opposition to #technology in general - a fretting over what might get lost or gained as it applies to lived experience - were conflated with #Luddism." - #BrianMerchant, Blood in the Machine
“the logic of unfettered #capitalism ensures that any labor-saving, cost-reducing or control-enabling device will eventually be out to use, regardless of the composition of the societies those #technologies will disrupt. - #BrianMerchant, Blood in the Machine
“ #Technological #disruption is not an accidental or inevitable phenomenon, but an intentional one.” - #BrianMerchant, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big #Tech
“The word ‘#innovation, it’s worth noting, carried negative connotations until the mid-twentieth century or so; #EdmundBurke famously called the French Revolution a ‘revolt of innovation’.” - #BrianMerchant, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech.
2 “… where the privileged few with access to the right levers could lift themselves up at the expense of the many.”- #BrianMerchant, Blood in the Machine: The Origin of the Rebellion Against Big #Tech
