Pushing Back Against Technology: The Rise of Neo-Luddism |
The Neo-Luddite movement involves resisting the increasing dominance technology has over our lives.
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Adopting a less tech-obsessed routine could become an increasingly a popular healthy lifestyle choice.
Over the past year, I’ve often joked that I’m considering joining the Neo-Luddite movement.
More recently, I’ve been giving it some serious thought.
What does it mean to be a Neo-Luddite? To explain that, we have to first go back to the original Luddites, a 19th-century British labor movement that revolted against the perception that textile machinery threatened to put people out of work. They infamously broke into and burned factories, destroyed weaving machines with sledgehammers, and engaged in armed conflict with employers, merchants, and government soldiers during the “Luddite riots” of 1811-1812. The Luddites named themselves after the mythical leader of the movement named Ned Ludd (often referred to as “Captain,” “General,” or “King” Ludd) who, like Robin Hood, lived in Sherwood Forest and championed the oppressed.
A more accurate historical account disputes that the Luddites were anti-technology—they were more concerned about unskilled workers than machines taking the jobs of skilled laborers—but that hasn’t stopped the term “Luddite” from being used in the modern era to refer to someone who stubbornly opposes new technology and resists progress in favor of clinging to the old ways.
In recent years, however, the term has shifted from being used in a mocking or derogatory fashion to now describing someone who’s reasonably pushing back against newer technology—the internet, smartphones, social media, and now AI—being crammed down our throats at every turn. This new lifestyle choice—harkening back to the zeitgeist of the original Luddites—is what's now being embraced within the Neo-Luddite movement.
Rage Against the Machines
Whether they identify as Neo-Luddites or........