> Luddites objected primarily to the rising popularity of automated textile equipment, threatening the jobs and livelihoods of skilled workers as this technology allowed them to be replaced by cheaper and less skilled workers.
The industrial revolution made life worse for generations in the early 1800s. We’re already seeing similar regressions — eg, app-driven-jobs and decreased customer service.
And you should look up how the automation of labor turned out for horses.
Automation as it was sold to us since the 60s is a complete failure on the social aspect. Wages stagnate, we work as much if not more than 40 years ago, retirement age is going up, job security is dead, inequalities are growing, poverty is rising, virtually everywhere in the west.
It's cool to automate factory jobs but if it's to push factory workers into amazon warehouses, uber, e-scooter juicers or food delivery jobs I don't see it as a net positive, capital owners sure generate more capital but that's the last thing I'd like to see increasing.
On the other hand, the demanded amount of fictional work (i.e. things that don't need to happen except folks must "make money") is not decreasing at all. This is stupid and bad.
It's not clear to me why it is fair to demand that the former stops as a response to the latter. The latter is what should be addressed, because addressing it is what gets us to luxury gay space communism when combined with the former. Which would be a nice place to be.
We can hope that the book in AI will lead to something similar - with automation making us far more productive.
Looking for that new Sunset Magazine issue, Backyard BBQing the Dev.