ENCORE: Lessons from the Luddites for the digital age

To celebrate the release of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion of Big Tech by the great tech journo Brian Merchant (Buy it! Read it! It’s terrific!), we’re reupping our conversation with Brian from back in June — which, between the OpenAI shakeup, Hollywood strikes, and the growing number of Big Tech antitrust cases, has only become more relevant since then. It’s also a great complement to our previous episode on the decline of the digital third space, in which we contrast a certain prominent venture capitalist’s techno-optimist manifesto with some of the ideas from Brian’s book.Brian joins us to discuss how the Luddites were actually an early iteration of the labor movement — not anti-tech, but anti-exploitation — the eerie similarities between the systems of automation these workers were up against and AI, and what a 2023 version of the Luddite movement might look like. Hint: It’s already happening, and it has nothing to do with smashing out phones, though you do you.Support our independent journalism by becoming a paid subscriber at theculturejournalist.substack.com. Paid subscribers receive free bonus episodes every month, along with full essays and culture recommendations.Keep it weird with The Culture Journalist on Instagram. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe