Are there any historical examples of humanity just saying "no" to a new disruptive technology?
The Amish, on the other hand, have successfully staved off most new technology since the 1600s. They also do not account for all of humanity.
It seems that saying no to a disruptive technology requires the naysayers to split off into a whole new society.
It didn't fail because the tactic didn't work economically, it failed because they were imprisoned and executed for destroying the sewing machines.
In much the same way - when workers go on strike today, it's a tactic, not a protest against the concept of work. Sometimes it works, sometimes that gets you put in prison too.
The luddites' modern equivalent would probably be the French anti-Uber protestors. They were, interestingly, actually described as being anti-smartphone by business journals. This is obviously false, but it's an interesting historical rhyme. I wonder if in 50 years time children will be taught about the "French iPhone protestors".
Orthodox Jews generally stay away from the internet.
History really does rhyme.
Other comments mentioned CFCs, cloning, chemical weapons, DDT. To that, let's add: Trans fats, Soylent, hydrogenated vegetable oils (butter's still going strong), bisphenol A in food and drink containers, veganism, rare earth metal extraction (and pollution, on US soil). Electric cars (at both the start and the end of the twentieth century!), zip fuel, most types of advanced fission reactor design and probably a couple non-nuclear renewable power plant types as well (up until recently).
The question's kinda paradoxically framed. If everybody just outright rejected the technology from the start, then it didn't get the chance to be all that "disruptive", even if it could have been. That makes it hard to think of good specific examples, but technically feasible and socially disruptive technologies get dropped for lack of interest all the time. If we blindly developed and proliferated every technology, without regard for its consequences and for whether people even want it or if it helps people while keeping harm to a minimum… Obviously that strategy would entail a.. casualty list.
In fact, maybe you could even say the default reponse to disruptive new technologies is "no". It took a lot of true believers and investors/wealth inequality to get ML to the point it's at now. And even then, it's most likely still heavily subsidized (I.E. operating at a loss, economically unviable so far), and the vast majority of "humanity" doesn't really understand, doesn't care about, or actively doesn't want it.
The fact that a relatively tiny portion of society is able to force it onto everybody despite that is a property of currently existing power structures, not an intrinsic feature of humans or of all potentially socially disruptive technologies.
Progress is a vector.
Progress to where? We require direction as well as magnitude.
We keep making lots of progress, against ourselves.
> Why would we want that?
Like, "AI" can make visually complex patterns of moving pixels now? Great! I like making my own patterns of pixels though. I like seeing other patterns of pixels because they're made by other people; art is just a communication medium. And I don't like being unable to trust anything I see, because the cost of fabricating fake videos is effectively zero, and the mass proliferation of doing so dilutes the pool of meaning, experience, and information with empty spam lacking substance.
Congrats! You solved a very challenging technical problem. Now, why is this a good thing exactly? How does this align with what most people actually want to get out of life?
So the "no" can be "not yet", and I believe it can materially affect outcomes.
I think we very often say "not yet". It's one of the main things policy does, even if it disguises itself as "no, never"
We're in an age of rising fascism, authoritarianism and inequality.
With regard to "AI", it's a technology that disproportionately favours established power and threatens democracy.
If "AI" really was a leveller, if it threatened to split monopolies, reign in government, redistribute wealth and build social capital then I think you'd hear a good deal more enthusiasm for it.
Right now even the dumbest people can see which way that wind is blowing.
But we have indeed said "not this fast" to research.