Al Zone Media. Welcome back to happen Here.
I'm Andrew Sage and you can find my stuff on my YouTube channel, Andrewism.
I'm joined once again by.
James getting no less a quid as we go, Behi, Andrew. I'm excited to learn about what we're going to learn about today.
Yes, we're picking up where we left off by tackling the Luddites of today. In our previous episode, we unravel the story of Luodites who sit against the encroaching forces of the industrial revolution and more specifically the abuses of workers by profit seeking capitalists. They were challenging the world view of lazy fair capitalism with this increase in amalgamation
of power, resources, and wealth, rationalized by its emphasis on progress. Today, it seems this history as we've repeating itself as we face a similar struggle against technological changes that come.
About to the detriment of workers.
As some tech has been used by tech companies in various industries to drive down wages and worsen conditions for common workers, say, for example, technological unemployment. For the rights who once resist the encroachment machines would find their concerns reflected in a modern world as a technological advanced ones often come with the cost of those whose jobs can
be automated away. For instance, in the manufacturing industry, robots and automated assembly lines of streamline production lead into increased efficiency and lower costs for companies, but these efficiencies often meant the displacement of human workers, and such as in manufacturing, the ripple effects extend to various sectors like customer service, transportation, and data analysis, and so there's this fere of job
displacement looms large. However, technological unemployment, which is the belief that as technology advances, human jobs are at risk, potentially dating to widespread unemployment, has been described by some economists
as a fallacy. Back in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, when the advance of mechanization began transform in various industries and with workers fear and automation would render them job less and devalue their labor, the people took a stand, but as time passed, new industries and job opportunities emerged to replace some of the old ones, ultimately
absorbing that workforce. Fast forward to the twentieth century and the rise of computers and automation technology reignited concerns about technological unemployment, but again, new jobs were created in new industries.
Today.
The debate continues as artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation advance at an unprecedented pace, and it remains to be seen what the long term consequences of those technologies may be. My position has really always been that we should be working less anyway, but instead people are obsessed with creating new jobs, even when they're unnecessary. See you know, of
course David Graeber is supposed jobs. But you know, even if the idea of mass unemployment due to tech is not true, if we end up replacing the jobs that are e raised with new jobs. Whatever the case may be, tech is nevertheless quite capable of destroying livelihoods, creating unintended consequences, and further concentrating power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. For every tech advance, whether that makes a job more fulfilling and enjoyable, there are also those who
make it more tea us and grinding. I mean, yes, tech can free us from some tasks. You know, accountants have digital spreadsheets to make their lives much easier. For example, writing is way easier now that the personal computers is more common. But while technological progress can produce prosperity, there's really no guarantee that the prosperity.
Will reach the workers.
In most cases, on the cut, it very clearly doesn't. In fact, many of the benefits of the industrial revolution were really not felt by the workers until decades later, after many of them have been you know, crushed or poisoned or killed or you know, died in a factory fire or whatever they shut down when protesting, you know, like that, they didn't see the benefits until much later on. You know, it's not like, you know, these things introduced
and boom, everybody benefits. I mean even now, not everybody in the world is benefiting from you know, the computer age.
There are still many people, like for example, in the Congo, who are endurance, slavery and staves like conditions in order to you know, procure the materials necessary for the computer age totally, and yet they're not seeing those benefits and arranged we're seeing when they'll see the benefits that many of us enjoy in various parts of the world, and particularly that there was enjoy in the global North in our relentless pursuit of progress and technological advancement as defined
by capitalism, we also end up losing our nature, our community, and in many cases are craftsmanship. I mean remember John Booth, the one who had said can you keep a secret?
Or so can I? He has other words?
You know that the new machinery might be man's chief blessing himself his curse if society were differently constituted.
That's where I have to.
Bring in the one and only the ls I've spoken about him before, of course, the Austrian philosopher, the theologia and the sort of everything.
Guy Ivan Ilich. Oh, yeah, fun times, fun times. Yeah.
He was a thinker ahead of his time. You know, it's really strange in some of his positions, I think, but a lot of his concepts resonate today in various movements. One of the foundational concepts in the modern movement of the growth is the concept of conviviality, which was redefined and introduced in the context of our Tools in Ilish's
book Tools of Conviviality. Eligio's vision, as explored by the book, is one in which technology serves humanity, not to plant it, where convivial tools empower individuals and communities, fostering creativity and autonomy while preventing the concentration of power in the hands of the few. According to il conviviality is individual freedom
realized in personal interdependence. It's basically the ability of individuals to interact and to interact creatively and autonomously with others and the environment to satisfy their individual and collective needs. Convivial tools are those which are robust and durable, preserve or enhance ecosystems, level unequal power relationships, and give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the
environment with the fruits of their vision. And a convivial society is one in which tools, which, according to ilag includes physical hardware, productive institutions, and productive systems. So tools will be factories, hospitals, schools, farms, all of those things are being included in his definition of tools, and a convivial society is one of which those tools operate on the humans scale and save the people instead of rulers.
The idea of convivial tools really challenges us to view technologies and means to enhance our lives rather than displace our livelihoods. It's a call to harness innovation for the bettering of society instead of the perpetuation of radical monopolies, which I spoke about in a previous it can happen
here episode. I think a Lodites like John Booth would have certainly appreciated that message, yea, and to the rights of today certainly do because yeah, I'm not the first nor the only person to see lessons to be learned from the la Lite movement. The concept of a Neolodite movement has been embraced by a variety of folks who may or may not understand what the original Latite movement
was about. Like, you know, you have these primitivists who embrace the Neolotte cause because I think it means hate and technology, and you have the anarchists and the trade unionists and the environmentalists. We're looking more at the label, organized and roots of the original Latite movement, and of course even see echoes of you know, Ogloodite action in the vandalism against self driving cars.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Neolodite movement is composed of activists, workers, scholars, and social critics who stand against the predominant worldview that unbridled technology represents progress, point ins key, then critiques, and in some cases actual action against technologies and tech companies who desecrate our planet and our society. Philosopher Lewis Mumford, who had written the Myth of the Machine Pentagonic Power, reminds
us that technology encompasses more than just physical objects. It also includes the techniques of operation and the social organizations that make up particular technology work.
Technology reflects our worldview.
The forms of technology we embrace, whether they be machines, techniques, or social structures, are seemply rooted in our perception of life, death, human potential, and the relationships between humans and nature.
Our choice of technology, in many ways, mirrors.
Our outlook on the world. That outlook in the modern world is shaped by a rather mechanistic approach to life, characterized by rational thinking, efficiency, delitarianism, scientific detachment, and a belief in humanities, ownership and supremacy over nature. That's a yeah, we're going to text like the military industrial complex, and they weren't sprawl. Honestly, in a sense, the old ltites kind of had it easy. Not I mean, obviously their
conditions were horrible. When I say they had it easy, I mean it's in the sense that their machines could be destroyed by their sledgehammers.
Right, yeah, yeah, what technology is a lot more ephemoral. You know, it's in the cloud.
It's as nebulous as microplastics in the soil, the water, and the breast milk. I mean, it's everywhere, and it's integrated into everything. It's like, where do you even begin?
Yeah?
Wow.
In the book When Technology Wounds by Psychologists Childish Clendening by psychologists Chellis Clendening, she studied technology survivors, people who had suffered injury or illness in recent years after being exposed to various toxic technologies in their homes and workplaces, whether nuclear, radiation, pesticides, asbestos, both control devices, or drugs, and covered how they had begun to question not only the processes that maimed them, but the world that indifferently
forced those processes on them under the guise of progress. Glendoning saw these victims as the basis of a new bloodlight movement struggling against what has been called the Second
Industrial what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution. Alongside thinkers like Lewis Mumford and Ivan Ilich, those survivors have gone on to create groups such as Asbestos Victims of America Aspartame, Victims of their Friends, Citizens Against Pesticide Misuse, DALK and Shield Information Network des action In, National National Association of Atomic Veterans, National Committee for Victims of Human Research, National Toxics Campaign, and the VDT Coalition, of course are
based in the US, and there are also actives groups like earth First that could could have been classified under the Neolotte cause and Earthful strategy was to stop environmental intrusions by.
Any means available, legal and otherwise.
So they would be slashing engines, slashing tires, disabling engines, blocking roads. Most famously, they would drilled spikes into trees and wilderness forests to prevent them from being logged by chainsaws.
Yeah.
But you know, while all these movements and organizations are happening in the Western world, it really wasn't just the Western world where this is happening. A positive undercurrent of the right spirit has surged where indigenous peoples have led the charges against the incursions of industrialism. Quncities are mainly resisting the machines and projects from dustrialization, but also pushing
back against its cultural impact. Peasants and farmers staunchally rejecting participation in the various development initiatives imposed upon them by compliant governments, often in the inence, often under the influence of entities like the World Bank or the US State Department. For example, during the early nineteen eighties, some farmers in Mali took a stand against the construction of dams and dykes for a rice growing program that they wanted no
part of. Other communities elsewhere have rallied to hold dam projects that threatened to submerge their ancestral lands, and some of them successful, as seen of the villagers who protested the Narmada Dam in India in the early nineteen nineties, and others have faced more daunting challenges, like the people of eastern Java who protested against the Neper Irrigation Dam and faced deadly consequences at the hands of Indonesian security
forces in nineteen ninety three. Intergous tribes have also organized to combat deforestation and road building projects that encroached upon their territories. The Chipco tree huggan movement in India during the nineteen seventies and eighties famously succeeded in stopping government clear cutting efforts and similar projects of echoed across the globe, from Malaysia to Australia, Brazil to Costa Rica, Solomon Islands,
Indonesia and beyond. Traditional fishermen in many regions, such as the Indians of continent, Malaysia, Indonesia, and multiple ports along the Pacific coast of South America including Ecuador and Columbia, have also taken action against industrial fish and fleets encroaching
on their waters and jeopardizing their livelihoods. In some cases, these protests may have involved the destruction of machinery, but sabotage, you know, is not unheard of, like in the case of a high tech chemical plant in Thailand in nineteen eighty six. The driving force behind these actions really mirrors to ethos you know, as they share this full und desire to preserve the traditional ways of life and livelihood in the face of industrial capitalisms relentless pull towards a
wage and market system. And then, of course, outside these movers and shakers, these underground activists, there are also you know, the philosophical lirites. Like the aforementioned illage. The Neola spectrum
is more diverse and intriguing than one might imagine. While it may not have crystallized into a more formal movement with clear representatives, as is expected of movements these days, it unites a wide array of individuals to share common awakening from the allure of unchecked technology and resist various
aspects of the industrial monoculture. Perhaps in the connections between these separate groups strengthen we'd see a greater recognition of the interconnected challenges in this grand tapestry of all evolving world. But the thing is to address the challenges posed by these technologies. It's not enough to merely regulate or eliminate in visual items like pesticides or nuclear weapons. What's required as a profound shift in our thinking about humanity and
in our relationship to life itself. We need to craft a new worldview that paves the way for a different way of interacting with our world, our technologies, and our fellow human beings.
We need to reconsider a.
Place in the ground scheme of things and to imagine a world where harmony and balance take precedence of a domination and control. In Notes toward a Neulart Manifesto written in nineteen ninety also by Cheldish, Clendoning, The author outlines three core principles and four prescriptions that could drive the Neulrite movement. In terms of principles, firstly, and I suppose most essentially to addressing the misconception, Neulorites are not anti technology.
Actually says technology is intrinsic to human creativity and culture. But what they oppose are the kinds of technologies that are at root destructive of human lives and communities. The next principle two is that all technologies are political. Quote a social critic Gerrymander rights in four argumented Elimination of Television, a book I read some years ago, by the way that a Ferminian to revisit. But continuing the quote, technologies are not neutral tools that can be used for good
or evil dependent on who uses them. They are entities that have been consciously structured to reflect and serve specific, powerful interests in specific historical situations. The technology is created by mass technological society. Are those that serve the perpetuation of mass technological society. They tend to be structured for short term efficiency, ease of production, distribution, marketing and profit potential,
or for war making. As a result, they tend to create rigid social systems and institutions that people do not understand and cannot change or control. The last principle three is that the personal view of technology is dangerously limited. Glendening argues that the oftenhood message, but I couldn't live without my mood processor.
Because of course she's right in this. You know, years and yeares ago.
Yeah, yeah, you have my word automatic typewriter.
Yeah, but this oftenhod message that I couldn't live up my word process. So, and I guess you could substitute that for smartphone, not computer. That message denies the wider consequences of widespread use of computers, for example, the toxic contamination of workers and electronic plants, or the certifying of corporate power through exclusive access to new information and databases. As Manda points out, producers and disseminators of technologies tend
to introduce their creations and upbeat utopian terms. You know, pesticides will increase yields to feed a hungry planet. Nuclear energy will be too deep, too cheap to meter.
Et cetera.
And of course you know you have to throw in that potshot had nuclear energy. It's very very twentieth century coded text. Yeah, however, quote. Learning to critique technology demands fully examining its sociological context, economic gratifications, and political meanings. It involves asking not just what is gained for what is lost and by who. It also looking at the introduction of technologies from the perspective not only a few in use, but of their impact on other living beings,
natural systems, and the environment. And then there's the neololide program, which loses me a bit at some points, even where I may agree with some of their principles, and you know, you might say that's a sign of my propagandized mind in our technological society.
But I'll leave you to be the judge of that.
Here's what Glendening explicitly proposes one, as I moved toward dealing with the consequences of modern technologies and preventing further destruction of life, the new Lolite movement should favor the dismantling of nuclear technologies, chemical technologies, genetic engineering technologies, television, electromagnetic technologies, and computer technologies, which, according to them, you know, according to her Coales, disease and death create dangerous me
to gens. In case of television functions, as a centralized I'm controlling force, poisons.
The environment, all these different things.
And I mean I gets some of the justifications for some of these technologies, right, Yeah, of course, disease, death, you know, pollution, social issue is right, yeah, But I at same time, I don't believe in through and I was entire sciences and technologies.
Who will see like that?
You know, it feels like it feels like a very myopic view being presented on some of these texts.
Yeah, I mean, I guess this was before really the decentralization of some of the means of dissemination of information that happened kind of later on with things like some
parts of the Internet. I don't want to say by any means of the Internet is decentralized, but at least the promise of that which we occasionally see deliver as well, right, Like if you saw today that I was just watching a video of the Yeppe Gay in Syria that the people in Rajaba like talking about the importance of women in the revolution in me and and like just occasionally the internet or technology gives us the thing they were
supposed to give us, a disability to connect without barriers. Absolutely, but yeah, like you said that that's the computer or the cell phone and that was recorded on or whatever happened because somebody somebody in the congo and in horrific conditions and the DC had to dig out some rare earth chemical and then got paid next to nothing and their ancestral homeland was ruined by some rabid company that makes billions of dollars and pays people like shit.
Yeah.
Yeah, So, I mean, I absolutely agree that the supply side of a lot of these technologies need to change drastically. Yeah, and also the you know, just the supply gene as a whole, you know, from the raw materials to the finished product and how it gets to us. I mean, that might mean no more of certain technologies, or it might mean a different approach, but it really remains to be seen. We really haven't tried other approaches because you know,
we live under this capitalist hegemony. The next step in the program to the New Rite movement should favor a search for new technological forms and the creation of technologies by the people directly involved in their use, not by scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who gain financially from mass production and distribution of the inventions. I don't know little about the
context in which their technologies are used. I don't necessarily believe in, you know, splitting it down the middle like that, as if you know, scientists and engineers are not going to be the people that are directly involved in their use.
And in some cases that's true.
But another case is, you know, you know, people who are using the pros sometimes the people who invented it.
Yeah, iterated on that to whatnot?
Like when I think about before there were three D printing weapons in a revution in the amber, they were three D printing press theses because land minds are so common there, right, and so like for those people where the engineer is a person whose brother or sister or non binary sibling or what have you needs a leg, and so they have iterated or designed a leg, and like that person is very much both like benefiting from the end use and doing the engineering exactly.
I get this is kind of like, you know, a screed against the Ivory tower types.
But yes, I don't think that reflects on you know, all of.
The or even most of the scientists and engineers. A lot of engineers on the ground, a lot of you know, barefoot scientists as the expression is.
Yeah, yeah, Nick, when we talk about things like permaculture or the things we talked about before, like, some of that is a science too, right. We have a thesis and we test it and we prove it, and we keep iterating on it like it's a hypothesis, I should say, Like, and that's certainly a sign which is rooted in a place and people and respect for the environment.
Yeah, I mean the manifesto goes a little bit further on this particular point. You know, she's advocating for the creation of technologies that are of a scale and structure that makes them understandable to the people who use them and are affected by them. She's advocating for the creation of technology is built with a high degree of flexibility, so that you do want to impose a rigid and
iror woosibile imprint on their users. And she's advocating for the creation of technologies are foster independence from technological addiction and promise political freedom, economic justice, and ecological balance.
They are I can't disagree, you know.
Yeah, I know, I'm down with that.
I'm absolutely down with advocating for that.
Yeah.
The third point in the program, she says, we favor the creation of technologies in which politics, morality, ecology, and technics are merged for the benefits of life on Earth.
For example, community based energy sources utilizing solar, wind and water technologies, organic biological technologies and agriculture, engineering, architecture, art, medicine, transportation, and defense, conflict resolution technologies which emphasize cooperation, understanding, and continuity of relationship, and decentralized social technologies which encourage participation, responsibility, and empowerment. Now you know, I'm the solar punk guy.
I'm the you know, the anarchists on you tube whatever.
You got me on these.
You know, I agree with all of these obviously, But what I find interesting is that this list seems to ignore how, you know, the technology is being advocated here are linked to.
The previous technologies that would just be in decride.
You know, like in one section she's talking about, you know, a fan of these chemical technologies, but chemistry is an inevitable component of the biological technology advocating for are You're saying that you don't like computer technologies, but when you're talking about like solar wind and water energy, which to.
Be fair, can be low tech too. Yeah, there is usually.
Some involvement of a computer in those energy systems. So I think there's sights inconsistency there, But I don't know, what do you think?
Yeah, I think yeah, like we can't sort of yeah, yeah, sometimes we can't say that to like you say, to a degree, all of these systems will require a technology, and like, I suppose we start to get into like what is the technology right before we get too far, and then I think that's probably a question worth asking. But yeah, I think it's easy to throw the maybe out of bar water. I suppose.
Yeah.
I mean, like like Momford it said, technology is more than just psical objects, it's also techniques of operation organizations.
That reflects a wild view.
Yeah. Yeah, so I suppose, as you said before, right, Like, it's what I think about often. It's like what we need to change is the way we see the world, and then the other stuff, well we can change.
In a MIDI will fall into place.
Yeah, I think again, I'm gonna get back. So I was just in ros Java for the last few weeks.
But one of the things that I heard from everyone there, right from like and not just from like people in the women's movement, but also from like random guy in the market who I'm having tea with is like that this idea that we can't can't decolonize the country until we declonize our family, and the notion that like women were the first colonized group of people, which and so like if we can't do gender equality, what you know,
what are we doing? What we can't Why why we find this revolution to liberate our entry when we can't liberate our spouse, daughter or what have you. So definitely, yeah, it's just it's a very powerful I know it's not like as fun as taking a sledgehammer to a cotton mill, but like if we if we replicate that kind of extractive extractive capitalism is what makes the supply side of these things so bad, and it's what also leads us to think about using them in a way that can
extract the most value from the worker. And so I would absolutely say that, you know, the break the frame in your mind.
I don't know, that's a good point.
And it's funny, as you mentioned, you know, as as fun as you know, smashing a cotton a cotton mill or whatever.
It made me think that you know, perhaps.
In a revolutionary society, I guess society.
You may see.
Therapeutic rooms where people can smash out some of their last frustrations against the capitalist system.
Yea, consequences they have left for them to fix.
Yeah, yeah, to get that out before you you take that out on.
Other go and rewild or something. You know, you have to get that energy out.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yea, yeah, remove the toxicity. I like that place where you can take that anger out.
Right.
So finally, the fourth and final element in the program, she says that we favor the development of a life enhancing worldview in Western technological societies. We opened in still a perception of life, death and human potential, and technological societies that will integrate the human need for creative expression, spiritual experience in community with the capacity for rational thought
and functionality. We perceive the human role not as the dominator of other species in planetary biology, but as integrated into the natural world with appreciation for the sacredness of all life. We foresee a sustainable future for humanity if and when Western technological societies restructure their mechanistic projections and foster the creation of machines, techniques, and social organizations to respect both human dignity and the nature's wholeness and progressing towards.
Such a transition.
We are aware that we have nothing to lose except a way of living that leads the destruction.
Of all life. We have a world to gain. And coote word that was that.
Was a nice nice, a nice very rhetorical flair at the end.
Yeah, that's.
I mean, in my opinion, coming to a close here, the neololites a.
Hits and a miss. They hit a lot more than they miss. There's things I have some slight.
Quibbles with, and I really, of course I have to give them credit for doing a lot more to investigate and confront technology than the vast majority of people. I mean, they're asking the right questions, questions that you don't see being asked at all, you know. See, you get these announcements for new technologies, new innovations, new techniques.
New whatever.
It's always just like you know, marketing and advertising, and then it's just implemented. There's no say of people, there's no ad raising questions about what are the consequences of this? Be ten years on the line, twenty years on the line, fifty years on the line, one hundred years on the line.
You know, yeah.
Yeah, and the lessons of letters are very clear. Technology should serve humanity, not the other way around.
Yeah.
I think that's that's a key take home, Like, Yeah, it's there to make our lives better. We don't have to not to allow us lands more exploited.
Yeah, landscape is vast and it's constantly evolving. But the principles of the lights and the vision of convivial tools, I think they can offer us some guidance. And I hope you're way able to take that away from this two part too. Yeah, and that's all I have for today.
Great.
Thanks you follow me on YouTube, aurism support and patroon Slash sent Drew. Thanks James for being part of this.
I thank you. That was good. I enjoyed it.
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