this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
294 points (86.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43821 readers
815 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I assume they mean in the original term, that technology should be used to make life better, not to damage peoples employment.
I had no idea the term Luddite had any meaning beyond the colloquial definition of shunning technology in general. Thanks for giving me something to read about today.
the greatest trick the capitalists ever pulled etc etc
I had no idea myself until just recently. The 99% Invisible podcast had a decent episode about it which I listened to that helped put it all into context.
The short story is that it was a labor movement trying to prevent mill owners from abusing workers by using automation to bleed the maximum productivity out of the fewest people. The Luddites would break into mills and smash the "infringing" machines. Tensions rose, the Luddites were eventually crushed, and the term Luddite was intentionally rebranded by capitalists to be synonymous with ignorant/anti-intellectual so that no one would ever want to associate with them again.