Thursday
1/30/04
Computers and Luddites
It’s never much fun finding yourself face to face with your frailties and shortcomings as a human being, and this last week or so has been the very model of a modern major mess… as it were. In other words, I came to realize just how unnecessarily dependant I had become on a certain piece of technology.
…Which was the fear of a whole class of home workers in Nottingham in the early nineteenth century as they faced the onslaught of industrial progress that carried with it the threat of technological dependence. Their reaction? All too universally human in that this increasingly marginalized class followed Ned Ludd’s example of picking up hammers and, in a show of defiance that would shake the growing class of industrial plutocrats to its core, broke a lot of stuff.
By 1813 a group of 17 such technologically challenged Luddites were hanged en masse, which sort of put a damper on things, and yet, those noble seeds of discontent and defiance live on in us yet. In short, when my computer/lifeline to the world was down for a while, I felt pretty cranky about all things mechanical indeed.
Now this is where you say, "But Evan, the Luddites were an undervalued class of traditional laborers whose very livelihoods were being threatened. You, however are little more than a spoiled crybaby who lost the luxury of downloading the Times Crossword rather than having to walk to the corner deli to pick it up yourself."
And I would have to reply that yes indeed, I do have a thing for my Compaq, and that is something with which I’m learning to live. In fact, I’ve even lost the urge to smash the toaster with a really big hammer. That’s right, nobody’s going to hang this technology junkie, cause I’m safely back in the warm, nurturing folds of Mother Conformity. Ahhhhhhh.
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Computers and Luddites
It’s never much fun finding yourself face to face with your frailties and shortcomings as a human being, and this last week or so has been the very model of a modern major mess… as it were. In other words, I came to realize just how unnecessarily dependant I had become on a certain piece of technology.
…Which was the fear of a whole class of home workers in Nottingham in the early nineteenth century as they faced the onslaught of industrial progress that carried with it the threat of technological dependence. Their reaction? All too universally human in that this increasingly marginalized class followed Ned Ludd’s example of picking up hammers and, in a show of defiance that would shake the growing class of industrial plutocrats to its core, broke a lot of stuff.
By 1813 a group of 17 such technologically challenged Luddites were hanged en masse, which sort of put a damper on things, and yet, those noble seeds of discontent and defiance live on in us yet. In short, when my computer/lifeline to the world was down for a while, I felt pretty cranky about all things mechanical indeed.
Now this is where you say, "But Evan, the Luddites were an undervalued class of traditional laborers whose very livelihoods were being threatened. You, however are little more than a spoiled crybaby who lost the luxury of downloading the Times Crossword rather than having to walk to the corner deli to pick it up yourself."
And I would have to reply that yes indeed, I do have a thing for my Compaq, and that is something with which I’m learning to live. In fact, I’ve even lost the urge to smash the toaster with a really big hammer. That’s right, nobody’s going to hang this technology junkie, cause I’m safely back in the warm, nurturing folds of Mother Conformity. Ahhhhhhh.
