(This text was officially published in German, in the Doing Digital Utopia Glossary: https://doing-digital-utopia.de/artikel/positiver-luddismus)
The Rebirth of King Ludd
While the world is in turmoil, shaken by political conflict and the ominous horizon of global warming, there are few positive things that the public can hold on to. Perhaps the primary and most frantic form of positivity is related to technological innovation, most notably the rise of publicly accessible artificial intelligence (AI) since the launch of Open AI’s ChatGPT in November 2022. Billions of Dollars are thrown at the new AI industry and social media are crawling with joyful yet uncanny threads presenting the newest breakthrough in image and video generation. Meanwhile, mindboggling amounts of energy are spent on humanity’s new Messianistic project, as, for instance, data centers in Ireland have overtaken all the country’s households in terms of energy consumption.[1]
The new holy grail of ‘general AI’ has attracted a large-scale propaganda effort by the world’s techno-elites, perhaps best illustrated by Marc Andreessen’s ‘techno-optimist manifesto.’[2] Andreessen, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture capitalists, passionately defends the ‘techno-capital machine of markets’ against the sceptics, most notably ‘Communists and Luddists.’ His manifesto expresses the deep-seated fear that some are out to spoil the AI party, and for good reasons, as Luddism is back after decades of uneasy slumber.
Luddism, named after the illustrious textile worker and machine-breaker Ned Ludd, is foremost a historical movement of techno-skepticism and resistance. In the wake of the industrial revolution, workers were revolting against the new capitalists who were out to ‘steal their bread’ and, more importantly, destroy the social fabric of their communities.[3] Instead of a source of progress, Luddites viewed technological innovations as a source of social destruction. The name ‘Luddism’ became henceforth a shorthand for techno-skepticism, both used as a banner to rally under (for the sceptics) and a label of disgrace (for the likes of Andreessen). This name now stands for more than a historical movement, and perhaps can best be associated with a sentiment that many people around the world share. It’s a sentiment that occupies the flipside, the shadow, of the dominant frantic techno-optimism. It expresses a deep-seated uneasiness, fear, and repugnancy towards technological innovation.
Because it might best be understood as a sentiment rather than as a coherent ideology, Luddism knows many different guises. Most infamously, it has been associated with the ‘Unabomber,’ Ted Kaczynski, who wrote an anti-technology manifesto calling for violent resitance, which he put into practice by sending explosives by post. The Luddist sentiment also resonates with recent critiques of capitalism, such as the Degrowth movement.[4] During the last few years, a ‘neo-Luddism’ has emerged as a response to the AI hype, with writers like Brian Merchant and Paris Marx rehabilitating King Ludd’s legacy. This intellectual revival of Luddism has been accompanied by a new wave of activism. For instance, while not being involved in ‘machine breaking,’ artists who see their livelihood threatened by generative AI are instigating hacks and lawsuits to fight back against the new ‘technofeudalists.’[5] Ironically, a Luddist sentiment even informs the self-criticism of the tech industry, illustrated by doomsday thinking in open letters calling for an AI moratorium signed by the likes of Elon Musk[6] and Yuval Noah Harari’s new book Nexus, which warns for an AI-induced apocalyps.[7]
Turn to the ‘Things’
Arguably, the reason why Luddism – understood as a sentiment – leads to such a diversity in expressions and allegiances is because it is not a coherent ideology. It is primarily a negative feeling, an attitude of being against (further) technological innovation. The resulting lack of a shared ideal, however, makes that the different guises of Luddism are dispersed and may not at all agree on a common approach. Some may want to have an ‘Amish-style community, but the technology cutoff is, like, 1998,’[8] some may want to introduce democratic control of innovation, some may want a return to nature, and some (like Musk) may position themselves as the new world saviours, ensuring ‘AI alignment’ against the odds of apocalyps.
What is needed, is a positive reply: positive Luddism.
Here, positivity is not to be understood as a joyful attitude. Rather, it means that the negative sentiment of Luddism may only become politically salient when paired with a positive understanding of political organisation.
To better grasp what this means, we may draw from the philosophy of technology. This branch of philosophy initially grew out of hermeneutic, anarchist and neo-Marxist critiques of technology (e.g., Heidegger and Ellul) who positioned technology as a whole as ‘the greatest danger.’[9] This philosophy of technology, it may be rightfully said, shared in the Luddist sentiment. Yet, more recently, philosophers like Bruno Latour and Don Ihde have questioned the purely negative attitude towards technology as a whole. They have advocated a return to the ‘things themselves,’ to understand technology not as a single, monolithic force, but as a plurality of things with different (positive and negative) affordances. After the ‘empirical turn,’[10] technology was no longer only regarded with suspicion, but regarded according to its ‘pharmacological’ character, being simultaneously poison and cure.[11]
Seen from this perspective, positive Luddism is not about saying ‘no’ to technological change, but rather asking ‘how’ technological change may be pursued so that it promotes rather than diminishes human flourishing. Generative AI, for instance, could be designed democratically (transparent and open-source), empowering workers and citizens, and respecting laws that protect human rights.
Beyond Plurality
And yet, this reply of contemporary philosophers of technology sounds, if anything, still too joyful. By reintroducing the plurality and diversity of things and their affordances we may lose sight of the systematic interconnectedness of AI as a technology and (global) forms of organization, most notably techno-feudalism.[12] The negative sentiment of Luddism is not related to any particular technology – this steam engine, or that AI chatbot – but to technology as such. There is a deep-seated problem with human activities becoming technological, be-they making art, writing a novel, or conducting politics.
Positive Luddism, then, is about embedding the negative sentiment towards technology as such within a positive political philosophy that considers technological affordances in their particularity. To develop this approach, we may draw from philosophers like Hannah Arendt.[13] Arendt considered technology not solely with suspicion, as it is indispensable for supporting human activities of labor (e.g., taking care of the household) and work (e.g., building public amenities). Yet, technology as such remains a danger when it starts to dominate human activities, most notably those anticipatory activities of art and politics. When becoming technological, politics turns into a process of production and consumption, diminishing rather than promoting human freedom. This is when we should not only ask ‘how’ technologies could best be designed and used, but also how we can actively limit their impact.
To illustrate what is at stake here, we may consider a recent – very laudable – attempt to embed technology in human organization in a new, emancipatory way. Spearheaded by the digital democracy initiative in Taiwan, Glen Weyl and Audrey Tang have recently published Plurality, a book that envisions a collaborative future in which democracy and technology support each other.[14] Somewhat ironically drawing from Arendt’s work, Plurality envisions democracy as a ‘social technology.’ Technologies like distributed systems and new voting mechanisms could be used, according to this vision, to enhance democratic life. Yet, democracy, for Arendt, should exactly be placed outside of the bounds of the world of technology, to enable citizens to take new political initiatives in the public sphere.
Positive Luddism is a project that should engage with ‘positive’ visions of technological change, as expressed in books like Plurality, without losing its critical potential. To be a positive Luddite in this sense does not require being fully ‘anti-AI,’ but to enable a discourse that puts AI in its rightful place. To do so, technology critique will need to grow into a fully-fledged political philosophy. Practically, this also means that technology critique needs to be more salient in the places of political power. For instance, it should feed into the ideologies of political parties and engaged with by members of parliament. Only in this way, the sceptic may move beyond the simple ‘no.’
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/23/ireland-datacentres-overtake-electricity-use-of-all-homes-combined-figures-show
[2] https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
[3] Merchant, Brian. 2023. Blood in the Machine the Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company. 119.
[4] Garcia, José Luís, Helena Mateus Jerónimo, and Tiago Mesquita Carvalho. 2018. “Methodological Luddism: A Concept for Tying Degrowth to the Assessment and Regulation of Technologies.” Journal of Cleaner Production 197 (October):1647–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.03.184.
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/18/chatgpt-said-i-did-not-exist-how-artists-and-writers-are-fighting-back-against-ai
[6] https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/sep/11/nexus-by-yuval-noah-harari-review-the-ai-apocalypse
[8] https://x.com/JaggedAuthor/status/1825233532374913334
[9] Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Graland Publishing, Inc. 26.
[10] Achterhuis, Hans. 2001. “American Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn.” Indiana: Indiana University Press.
[11] Stiegler, Bernard. 1998. Technics and Time 1. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
[12] Varoufakis, Yanis. 2023. Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. London: The Bodley Head.
[13] Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Vol. 24. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089589.
[14] Tang, Audrey, and Glen Wyle. 2024. Plurality. Self-published.