Modern-Day Luddism

[BornInMarch]

In the 1800s some machines were invented in England which allowed finished goods to be produced with only a small fraction of the labor that would have been needed to produce them a century before. This would make work far more efficient and ultimately end up making goods far more accessible than they previously were.

When these machines initially came out, a lot of people absolutely hated them. These people -calling themselves Luddites- talked about how these machines were creating an unnatural way of life, how they were going to destroy society by putting everyone out of work and forcing them into lives of crime, about how they were dehumanizing by turning people into cogs of production, and about how these machines must be banned.

Now, every single time a new technology is created that has the potential to make the world a better place, people STILL react with fear and knee-jerk rejection! The complaints are always the same too: “It’s unnatural”, “It’s dehumanizing”, “It’s going to destroy society”, and so on. It happened with Computers, it happened with robots, and so on. While it is true that new technology CAN be used for evil (nuclear power being one example), it can also be used for good as well.

So I think that whenever we learn of a new and perhaps frightening technology, we should resist the urge to reject it out of hand. Instead we should first attempt to compare it to something we have that already exists, and then seriously look at positive benefits it might bring, and then look at negative affects it might bring (being careful in both stages to be specific and to not assume one extreme or another). Because no new technology is going to go away forever, so the best we can do is look for positive uses for it.

 

[RPRPsych]

In the 1800s some machines were invented in England which allowed finished goods to be produced with only a small fraction of the labor that would have been needed to produce them a century before. This would make work far more efficient and ultimately end up making goods far more accessible than they previously were.

When these machines initially came out, a lot of people absolutely hated them. These people -calling themselves Luddites- talked about how these machines were creating an unnatural way of life, how they were going to destroy society by putting everyone out of work and forcing them into lives of crime, about how they were dehumanizing by turning people into cogs of production, and about how these machines must be banned.

Now, every single time a new technology is created that has the potential to make the world a better place, people STILL react with fear and knee-jerk rejection! The complaints are always the same too: “It’s unnatural”, “It’s dehumanizing”, “It’s going to destroy society”, and so on. It happened with Computers, it happened with robots, and so on. While it is true that new technology CAN be used for evil (nuclear power being one example), it can also be used for good as well.

So I think that whenever we learn of a new and perhaps frightening technology, we should resist the urge to reject it out of hand. Instead we should first attempt to compare it to something we have that already exists, and then seriously look at positive benefits it might bring, and then look at negative affects it might bring (being careful in both stages to be specific and to not assume one extreme or another). Because no new technology is going to go away forever, so the best we can do is look for positive uses for it.

Interesting.

I’ve seen some Traditional Catholics argue against an over-reliance on technology to “make work easier” because they see it as contravening the curse of Genesis 3, in which Man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. However, that is quite different from being a Luddite.

 

[porthos11]

Whoever reacts this way is not following the mind of the Church, which has always been at the forefront of science.

Nuclear power can blow us to kingdom come or light our cities.

The Church does not object to the invention of epidural anesthesia to relieve the pain of childbirth, Eve’s curse notwithstanding.

It was a Catholic priest who devised the Big Bang Theory about the origin of the universe.

I say, go technology. And fortunately, so does the Church.

The Church will speak up when life is endangered. That’s why you will not hear a whit from the Church on adult and cord stem cell research, but when you begin destroying human life, that’s where the line is drawn.

But not technology per se.

 

[mikekle]

These are strange times we live in for sure… I do not think I have ever seen anyone complaining about any new technology or saying the cat needs to be put back in the bag, heck, even when robots with full A.I. are spoken of, and will very likely take many jobs from people in the future, everyone just remarks how cool the technology is.

Personally I think we have been kept at a ‘technological plateau’ for some time now, I will say the computer and cell phone tech is helpful and can be fun, but its not really groundbreaking, in fact I havent seen any tech , say comparable with some of the stuff Tesla and others in his time were coming out with. The new technology that does come out seems to be limited to certain things.

Hard to explain what Im trying to say here, but lets say they perfect an invisibility cloak, there is just no way they are going to let the general public have access to that kind of technology, it would cause enormous societal problems if people had the ability to make themselves totally invisible…another example, lets say they devise a way to email tangible objects (this one was actually mentioned in Popular Mechanics article about technology in the next 20 yrs), but will they really allow the public to have that kind of ability, I seriously doubt it…same thing with other technologies, its almost like we are only given tech if it has certain limitations.

 

[MJDorry]

To quote Neil Postman:

1. “What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?”

1. “Whose problem is it?”

1. “Which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution?”

1. “What new problems might be created because we have solved this problem?”

1. “What sort of people and institutions might acquire special economic and political power because of technological change?”

1. “What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies, and what is being gained and lost by such changes?”

I would add: “Is this problem big enough that new technology is really needed, or is it merely an inconvenience?”

Neil recounts a story in which a car salesman was trying to sell him a car by listing off a bunch of new widgets. One of those widgets was automatic windows. When Neil asked what problem automatic windows solves, the salesman responded, “the problem of having to roll them down by hand.” At which point, Neil retorted, “I’ve been driving for 20 years and rolling down my windows by hand has never struck me as a problem.”

Personally, I don’t own a smartphone and minimize social media because I’ve seen the socially damaging impact it has. People can’t focus on anything more than a paragraph or two, and they can’t carry on normal conversations at great length. I went to a party once in which everyone was plopped down on a couch using their smartphones instead of connecting with each other. I have a friend who can’t have an intellectual conversation anymore without using google because the easy access has trained his brain to not need to memorize anything.

 

[mikekle]

To quote Neil Postman:

I would add: “Is this problem big enough that new technology is really needed, or is it merely an inconvenience?”

Neil recounts a story in which a car salesman was trying to sell him a car by listing off a bunch of new widgets. One of those widgets was automatic windows. When Neil asked what problem automatic windows solves, the salesman responded, “the problem of having to roll them down by hand.” At which point, Neil retorted, “I’ve been driving for 20 years and rolling down my windows by hand has never struck me as a problem.”

Personally, I don’t own a smartphone and minimize social media because I’ve seen the socially damaging impact it has. People can’t focus on anything more than a paragraph or two, and they can’t carry on normal conversations at great length. I went to a party once in which everyone was plopped down on a couch using their smartphones instead of connecting with each other. I have a friend who can’t have an intellectual conversation anymore without using google because the easy access has trained his brain to not need to memorize anything.

I agree, and I tend to think there is an agenda here, it seems the goal is to get everyone as disconnected from one another as possible, and that makes me wonder what the ultimate goal is.

The reason why there are no groups trying to fight this is because of the tactics and methods they are using, smartphones and similar stuff is very cool, its fun and popular, NO ONE is going to try and stop that and I doubt they could if they tried.

Its really about how new technology is presented to the public, no one considers the negatives, they just care about how many songs they can download, how fast their texts and emails get thru, how fast they can shop online, etc etc

I will say the enemy sure is clever!

 

[BornInMarch]

I would add: “Is this problem big enough that new technology is really needed, or is it merely an inconvenience?”

Neil recounts a story in which a car salesman was trying to sell him a car by listing off a bunch of new widgets. One of those widgets was automatic windows. When Neil asked what problem automatic windows solves, the salesman responded, “the problem of having to roll them down by hand.” At which point, Neil retorted, “I’ve been driving for 20 years and rolling down my windows by hand has never struck me as a problem.”

Personally, I don’t own a smartphone and minimize social media because I’ve seen the socially damaging impact it has. People can’t focus on anything more than a paragraph or two, and they can’t carry on normal conversations at great length. I went to a party once in which everyone was plopped down on a couch using their smartphones instead of connecting with each other. I have a friend who can’t have an intellectual conversation anymore without using google because the easy access has trained his brain to not need to memorize anything.

Smartphones and social media are not socially damaging, if anything they are bringing people together. If you want to communicate with a friend or relative who lives halfway across the world then you can send them a text or an email; a few decades earlier you would have had to have called them on a landline phone (which they might not have been able to answer if they were asleep or at work) and before that you would have had to have sent a written letter (which could take days or weeks to arrive, and twice as long for them to send a reply).

Likewise having access to all the information there is allows you to figure things out quickly. Now if you don’t know the answer to something you can look it up on your phone, instead of having to wait until you got home to use a computer (or worse, heading to the library and hoping they had a reliable source on the topic). The complaint about new social tech hurting the human memory is actually a common one; Socrates even complained about the written word because he believed that it made it impossible for people to remember, and for this reason he never wrote anything down (Ironically we only remember Socrates because his student Plato wrote down what he said).

 

[kozlosap]

To quote Neil Postman:

I would add: “Is this problem big enough that new technology is really needed, or is it merely an inconvenience?”

Neil recounts a story in which a car salesman was trying to sell him a car by listing off a bunch of new widgets. One of those widgets was automatic windows. When Neil asked what problem automatic windows solves, the salesman responded, “the problem of having to roll them down by hand.” At which point, Neil retorted, “I’ve been driving for 20 years and rolling down my windows by hand has never struck me as a problem.”

Personally, I don’t own a smartphone and minimize social media because I’ve seen the socially damaging impact it has. People can’t focus on anything more than a paragraph or two, and they can’t carry on normal conversations at great length. I went to a party once in which everyone was plopped down on a couch using their smartphones instead of connecting with each other. I have a friend who can’t have an intellectual conversation anymore without using google because the easy access has trained his brain to not need to memorize anything.

I agree that everywhere I look I see a person with a smart phone attached. It is what it is, in other words, we are not going back to an era when there were no Star Trekesque communicators. I enjoy my phone, but we have rules in our family/group that there are no phones at dinner or in other social situations. What is your reason for not having a “smart” phone? I didn’t even realize that the big 3 carriers, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile even sell devices that are not capable of receiving and sending email, etc. Even the “free” devices that are offered by smaller providers are smart. I’m not being condesending, but I’m just facinated about the reasons you have for not partaking in the new world passtime!

 

[mikekle]

I agree that everywhere I look I see a person with a smart phone attached. It is what it is, in other words, we are not going back to an era when there were no Star Trekesque communicators. I enjoy my phone, but we have rules in our family/group that there are no phones at dinner or in other social situations. What is your reason for not having a “smart” phone? I didn’t even realize that the big 3 carriers, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile even sell devices that are not capable of receiving and sending email, etc. Even the “free” devices that are offered by smaller providers are smart. I’m not being condesending, but I’m just facinated about the reasons you have for not partaking in the new world passtime!

The big carriers all still have cell phones that are very basic, they just do not advertise or push them in the stores.

But just looking how quickly we went from basic cell phones to smartphones, you have to wonder whats coming next and what the ultimate goal is. You can be sure the carriers have ‘the next big thing’ waiting in the pipelines, which will make the most advanced iphone of 2017 look like a rotary phone.

Plus, anytime you have something that so many people partake in and are willing to spend lots of money on, there is going to be lots of temptation to abuse that or take advantage of it.

Personally I think ultimately they are pushing for a sort of merger between computer tech and biology, eventually this stuff is going to be implanted, its only a matter of time now, and since it is so popular and accepted, any kind of ‘merger’ will be seen as positive, all the things you can now do will be heavily advertised, they will put a hip and cool spin on it

I also think this is the ultimate tool of control for the authorities, most people know they can track everything you do on a cell phone, just imagine what they can do that we are not aware of! We already know they spy on most people and collect data, so you can be sure there is a reason for doing this and it is probably not a good thing.

 

[MJDorry]

If you want to communicate with a friend or relative who lives halfway across the world then you can send them a text or an email…

Likewise having access to all the information there is allows you to figure things out quickly…

Socrates even complained about the written word because he believed that it made it impossible for people to remember, and for this reason he never wrote anything down (Ironically we only remember Socrates because his student Plato wrote down what he said).

To the first, that’s a big if, and indeed it would be wonderful if that’s what such technology was ultimately used for, but an overwhelming majority of the time, it’s not. I have an iPad at home and I use it to connect with family and friends who are far away. Emails aren’t social media and people don’t send each other emails when they’re at parties. Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat are, and they are not even remotely used for having meaningful communication.

To the second and third, as I said, I have a friend who literally does not recall anything in an instant any more because of the ease of access. Perhaps Socrates was actually right, though to a lesser degree than he believed. But when you read a book and then put it down to go out, you’re responsible for still memorizing its contents and being present. Not so with an iPhone in your jeans pocket. And the problem with “all that information” is that there’s a lot more of it than you can hope to make sense of and little in the way of structured or guided learning. It’s causing an overload, and as a consequence, reduced attention spans.

 

[MJDorry]

I agree that everywhere I look I see a person with a smart phone attached. It is what it is, in other words, we are not going back to an era when there were no Star Trekesque communicators. I enjoy my phone, but we have rules in our family/group that there are no phones at dinner or in other social situations. What is your reason for not having a “smart” phone? I didn’t even realize that the big 3 carriers, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile even sell devices that are not capable of receiving and sending email, etc. Even the “free” devices that are offered by smaller providers are smart. I’m not being condesending, but I’m just facinated about the reasons you have for not partaking in the new world passtime!

I’m hardly in a situation where it would be appropriate to use a smartphone, and when I get home, I have a laptop and a big screen. It’s all the tech I need. Beyond that, I guess it’s an ascetic choice. It’s good to abstain from something society indulges in, and I’ll tell you right now, it’s not going to be sugar or video games.

 

[styrgwillidar]

…
I agree, and I tend to think there is an agenda here, it seems the goal is to get everyone as disconnected from one another as possible, and that makes me wonder what the ultimate goal is.

The goal of the technology companies is to make money. For the social media platforms you can join for free, you are the product. They are selling access to you to their advertisers, and the aggregated data to interested parties. Often, also advertisers and manufacturers who use the data to target their ads and be more efficient, it can include government agencies for various reasons- studies on behaviors, tracking, baselining traffic to assist in developing algorithms to find persons of interest.

Now- some leftist groups have the goal of suppressing speech contrary to their views. Their goal is to become involved in the companies like Twitter to censor the views and control access to information. Since most of the owners of these type companies lean left, they tend to see this as a good thing- assisting politicians they approve of, hampering politicians they disapprove of. Not really a problem, just something to be aware of, they certainly aren’t neutral and shouldn’t present themselves as such. Although some argue, that Twitter taking this path is one of the reasons they don’t make a profit contrary to the first goal of a business. Interesting to see how much longer they can stay around.

I don’t have a smart phone because- $30 a month. Already paying for my kids smartphones, don’t need another one. Sure, more functionality, but for things I don’t have a use for, not on social media much, no apps out there I can’t live without, not into living my life looking down at a screen, I don’t need to be in constant touch with the virtual world. Real time audio and texts takes care of everything I need while I’m out and about.

 

[kozlosap]

I’m hardly in a situation where it would be appropriate to use a smartphone, and when I get home, I have a laptop and a big screen. It’s all the tech I need. Beyond that, I guess it’s an ascetic choice. It’s good to abstain from something society indulges in, and I’ll tell you right now, it’s not going to be sugar or video games.

LOL! I will not be giving up caramel apple suckers (except for Lent)!