The Luddites are Back

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Thus far, the new Luddites--with the exception of Earth First's well-publicized monkeywrenchers--have been long on talk and short on action. One effort to start talking about what to do comes from Ohio's Scott Savage, editor of Plain magazine and director of the Center for Plain Living, who is working to pull together the Second Luddite Congress on April 25, the anniversary of the day that the first congress was declared by the original Luddites more than 180 years ago. Savage's goal is a "nonresistant Luddism" that would transform industrial society without confrontation; it's hard to say whether it will have any more of a prayer than the original Luddites' machine-smashing. What's clear, though, is that someone, somewhere needs to start opening horizons beyond the "technology sucks" vs. "technology is groovy" mode that dominates current treatments of what the English weavers called "the machine question." For a particularly disturbing example, check out the debate between Sale and Wired's Kevin Kelly (Wired, June 1995), which ended in the contestants' each committing a $1,000 check to a bet on--note the subtlety here--whether technology will have saved or wrecked the world by 2020.

--Monika Bauerlein

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