Modern Technology and the Neo Luddite Movement
Modified version of lyrics from the Frankie Valli 1967 song ‘Can’t take my eyes off you.’
Dedicated to all those mobile phone junkies.
You're
just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off of you
You’re like Heaven to touch
I wanna hold you so much
At long last, love has arrived….
Pardon the way that I stare
There's nothin' else to compare
The sight of you leaves me weak
There are no words left to speak
Please let me know that you’re real….
You're
just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off of you
Tech Addiction Is More of a Problem Than People Realize
Technology has been very good at giving us what we want, but less good at giving us what we need.
By Arianna Huffington
We are at an inflection point in our relationship with technology. Technology allows us to do amazing things that have immeasurably improved our lives. But at the same time, it’s accelerated the pace of our lives beyond our ability to keep up. And it’s getting worse. We’re being controlled by something we should be controlling. And it’s consuming our attention and crippling our ability to focus, think, be present, and truly connect with ourselves and the world around us.
The numbers only confirm what we all know to be true — we’re addicted. A 2015 Bank of America report found that over 70 percent of Americans sleep next to or with their phone. This addiction comes at a cost. A Pew study from the same year found that 89 percent of phone owners said they’d used their phones in their last social gathering, and 82 percent felt that when they do this it damages the interaction.
It’s gotten become so bad that the phone doesn’t even need to be turned on for it to negatively affect
our relationships. One study found that when two people are in a conversation, the mere presence of a phone can have, as the authors write, “negative effects on closeness, connection, and
conversation quality,” leading them to conclude that the mere presence of mobile phones can create a psychological hindrance.
There’s also plenty of research suggesting a link between heavy social media use and depression, especially in young people.
The problem lies not with our desire to connect, but with our form of connection. Our technology gives us a form of connection with the whole world, but at the same time it can limit the depth of our connection to the world around us, to those closest to us, and to ourselves. Technology has been very good at giving us what we want, but less good at giving us what we need.
And what we need is to re-calibrate our relationship our technology. This is one of the most important conversations of our time. And ironically, conversation is the very thing our addiction to our screens prevents. We’re so busy scheduling our lives, documenting them, logging them, tracking them, memorializing and sharing them that we’re not actually living them.
Importantly, our ability to have this conversation won’t last forever. The rise of AI, and the increasing hyper-connectivity of our daily lives, has the potential to erode our humanity even further.
Isaac Asimov saw this coming back in 1988. “The saddest aspect of life right now,” he wrote, “is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” And right now, we’re drowning in data, but starved for wisdom.
Wisdom would require thinking about the qualities we consider essentially and uniquely human – about what is sacred and irreducible about our humanity — and then thinking about how can we redraw and protect the borders of that humanity as technology is mounting a full-scale invasion.
And the answer isn’t to stop technology or go backwards. That ship has sailed — and mostly for the better. The answer is smarter and better technology. In fact, I think this is going to be one of the next frontiers in technology — and it’s one of the things we’re doing at Thrive Global with our technology platform — creating apps and tools and even AI that helps rebuild those barriers around our humanity, and reclaim the time and space needed for real connection.
The increase in automation and AI, what some are calling the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is obviously going to bring profound changes. In the workplace, it’s going to put a premium on essential human qualities like creativity, intuition, decision-making, and wisdom.
The paradox is that these are the exact qualities that are impaired by our addiction to technology. So our ability to succeed in the technology-dominated workplace of the future depends, in no small measure, on our ability to — right now — take back control of our technology, and our lives.
Arianna Huffington is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, the founder of The Huffington Post, and the author of 15 books, including, most recently, "Thrive" and "The Sleep Revolution."
What is the Neo Luddite Movement?
I have been interested for some time in Neo-Luddism. Neo-Luddism is today a movement advancing a return to more traditional values in the way people and communities live, with a focus on avoiding destructive technologies, enhancing the environment and creating pleasant living conditions for all. They believe that the view that unbridled technological advancement equates to progress, is a fallacy.
Most Neo-Luddite writing today is about big tech and the universality and damaging effects of personal technology – smartphones, apps, Facebook etc., and the dubious uses that big tech companies and governments make of them. Also, the harm created by people’s addiction to this type of technology.
The books by Cal Newport (Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University) “A World Without Email” and “Digital Minimalism” amongst others analyse the harm that some modern technology is doing to the state of people’s health, to communities and the negative effects it can have on work, workers health and business productivity, despite the computer industries claims of the technologies essentiality.
However, the Neo-Luddite movement’s history dates to the 1950s or earlier and espoused a return to nature and more “natural” communities. Some of the earlier proponent's thinking was ridiculously extreme and should be ignored. However, I think much of this earlier view needs further consideration and development.
The original Luddite movement gets a lot of misrepresentation. Many today believe that the Luddites were against progress and technology represented by new textile machinery. Machinery that they then attacked and smashed to protect older ways of working.
This belief is erroneous. Luddites often happily used the same machinery that they were smashing. The problem they were facing was not new technology but the way it was being used. Factories and mills were being set up in towns and cities in the first decade of the nineteenth century. These mills were filled with modern textile machines – the same ones that were being used in the Luddite community rural workshops. The problem that arose was that the factories were more efficient by virtue of size and could undercut the prices of the smaller rural workshops. This created a variety of problems. First, the rural workshops became unprofitable and had to close. Now the unemployed rural workers tried to get jobs in the mills located in the towns and cities. Some succeeded, but most did not, because the mills, being more efficient, required a smaller workforce. Add to this, the mill owners who now had the whip hand, reduced wages, and eradicated standard labour practices.
The result was high unemployment in traditional textile and weaving areas, lower wages and conditions in the mills, and depletion of rural communities with the associated knock-on effects. The Luddite rebellions against these early poor industrial revolution practices resulted in riots, shootings, deaths, military interventions, executions and deportations.
I used to live in Clitheroe, a town that, to a large extent, was built on its sixteen cotton mills in its heyday. I visited the Queen Street Mill, the last working steam-powered cotton mill (now a museum) in Burnley some years ago. The working conditions in these mills at the time of the Luddites were truly awful. Sheds contained hundreds of steam-powered looms packed closely together. Young children, because of their small size, were employed to crawl under the looms to clear away cotton debris. Serious accidents often occurred to both children and adults. The noise in the mills was so loud that workers had to use sign language to communicate. Most mill workers eventually became deaf, resulting from the noise. Men, women and children as young as 4 worked unbelievably long hours daily. It was a form of slavery. The 1844 Factories Act banned women from working more than 12-hour days and children aged 9 to 13 from working more than 9 hours per day. Also, for women and young adults aged 13 to 18 to work no more than 63 hours per week. In 1856 women and children were banned from being made to work outside of daylight hours. These were the sort of working conditions that the Luddites were fighting against.
It is currently being claimed that AI will result in many thousands of job losses in all areas of employment. Again, all to the benefit of the business owners, fat cats, and oligarchs whilst the unemployed struggle, especially in countries that do not have a viable social security net.
Along with forgetting what the Luddite movement was really about, people in the prosperous West, tend to forget how their countries obtained their wealth. Their historic wealth was built upon conquest, colonialism, exploitation, and slavery. The British East India Company had a private army of a quarter of a million soldiers by the early nineteenth century and controlled two-thirds of India as well as large portions of Burma and Afghanistan, and had a catastrophic influence in China. Through military might they also had great influence in Persia, Egypt and Java. Trading in textiles, tea, porcelain and spices the British exchequer had ten per cent of its income from the company import duties alone.
Forcing Indian farmers to produce opium instead of food crops, the opium was then sent to flood China and undermine the trade-restrictive Qing Dynasty, resulting not only in the Opium Wars but in mass starvation in India. When a famine struck, one million Indians died as a direct result of losing their agricultural produce to opium.
In the Americas, slavery produced massive profits from growing cotton, corn, sugarcane tobacco and coffee. It is estimated that twelve million slaves worked in the Americas in the history of the slave trade.
The Spanish and Portuguese Conquistadores ravaged and pillaged throughout the Americas, Caribbean and Asia, for "For Gold, For God, For Glory". Millions of indigenous people died. France and the Dutch were also colonial powers.
The world is slowly rebalancing, especially since the economic emergence of China. The Western economies are slowly losing much of their wealth to emerging Eastern economies. This is causing concern, especially for traditional low-paid jobs that are easily exported to low-paid countries. Globalisation in my opinion has too many negative effects particularly culturally – a Starbucks on every corner replacing traditional cafés, McDonalds replacing ethnic restaurants etc. Globalisation of trade, however, can be good for poorer countries providing much-needed employment, provided that good working conditions are established – sadly often not, with a neo-slave trade attitude.
As a teenager, I remember the pundits saying computers and robots would revolutionise work. This revolution would result in people having the same or better salaries and, importantly, more leisure time to enjoy life. The reality has been that computers and robots have revolutionised work; the benefits, however, have all gone to the business owners and fat cats, whilst the ordinary working man has lost out.
Today, there are serious warnings about the rapid advancement of AI.
Those who say AI will be beneficial by improving medical research are correct. There are other areas where AI will surely be beneficial, mainly, I believe, in the areas of research. These benefits do not have the negative effect of putting many people out of work.
On the other hand, unrestricted AI proliferation has the potential to make many people unemployed. Estimates say that AI will make 15 million Europeans unemployed by 2040, mostly from the mid-skilled levels of employment. This will especially hit workers who have little bargaining power. Smaller enterprises will be hardest hit, whilst larger corporations may be more resilient.
The need for the labour movement and unions to become more active will be essential.
Already we have seen the Writers Guild of America go on strike. Although the strike has various causes, one of the main ones is resistance to the use of AI with its potential for screenwriting job losses. This is just the beginning.
Many business leaders see AI as replacing a shortage of workers due to ageing populations. Surely a more moral and realistic approach would be immigration and training of younger people.
Others say there will be new job opportunities for those made unemployed by AI in emerging sectors like Green Energy and Smart Cities. I find this to be wishful thinking.
Governments are already considering controls of AI. I don’t see how, in a world where AI is not based in any one country, anything much can be achieved by governments.
The Internet revolution started in 1995 with expectations of a fantastic future. To a great extent, these expectations have been met. Wikipedia and online encyclopaedias have brought a virtual library to people’s fingertips. Research is easy and extensive. Education is enhanced, and there are many more benefits.
On the other side of the coin, there are negative effects on society. Research shows that daily the most searched-for content is pornography, which has harmful effects, especially on society's youth. Cybercrime is growing. Online activity is causing the closure of customer face-to-face activity in areas such as banking and retail. Rural communities are dwindling as shops, post offices, banks, and other services transfer online. Often, if you want to visit your bank that used to have a local branch, you now have to travel many miles to find a brick-and-mortar establishment; that now may only be open for limited days/hours.
Social media, which was originally intended as a fun place to swap gossip with friends, is now a place that has, for many, addictive compulsive consequences that cause serious medical problems, including depression, withdrawal from society, anxiety, poor relationship/communication skills, lack of attention span, even suicide.
Social media is also now extensively used by what are known as “Bad Actors.” Bad Actors range from abusive trolls, conspiracy theorists, misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda, to the evils of the “Dark Web.” All of these can have serious consequences for people’s mental health. There are many theories about why certain people believe in conspiracy theories. What is certain is that the internet has caused an explosion in these beliefs amongst people vulnerable to them.
Add to this, state control, censorship, collection and misuse of people’s personal information to be used for profit-generating targeted advertising at one end of the spectrum, with political manipulation and propaganda at the other, and this all brings us to the chaos that this once proud technology has brought the world to.
AI used carefully and well, just like all current technology, can have huge benefits for society. Allowed to be misused, it will have disastrous consequences not only for employment but also for society's general well-being.
A certain amount of Neo Luddism is most certainly called for!
Charles