The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution - Essay Example

Kirkpatrick Sale (1995) suggested that the Luddites were 'rebels against the future'. What did this mean in the context of 1812, and what does it mean today for Neo-Luddites There is a tendency in human beings to resist change. This tendency is not altogether bad. The resistance to change becomes also an opportunity to have a second look at the problem and re-examine the desirability of the change and the need to modify the extent of the change needed for the present and future welfare of the people who are going to be affected by the innovation. Having said that resistance to change is more or less embedded in human system and if the change is good for the welfare of humanity it has to be embraced whole-heartedly. New scientific and technical discoveries may threaten not one's economic welfare or ideological persuasion but rather the "psychic capital" invested in current scientific views-some involving one's own work-challenged implicitly or explicitly by a new report. Of course, the longer one has held views and invested energy in them, the more reluctant one may be to alter them. (Hook 2002) There have been many inventions that have made a pivotal contribution to the way we work and make a living. Two important inventions that have made a sea change in the lives of millions people are the wide spread use of steam power in the early years of 19th century and the increasing use of computers in the 1970s.The resistance to machines culminated in the 19th century in the Luddite rebellion and there is an ante-technology movement across the globe today and many people are joining the new bandwagon world over. Kirkpatrick Sale is the self-proclaimed Neo-Luddite and technology critic of the modern times. He has written and lectured widely on the problems of our dependency on technology and fears a catastrophe might overtake mankind if we do not keep technology at a safer distance from our lives. The Tyranny of Techno Culture Kirkpatrick Sale has churned out a myriad host of books all harping on the theme of the tyranny of techno culture. The deep contradiction in the technology-driven contemporary society is underlined in his works. The time saving technologies of today have made time scarcer than ever. The leaps and bounds in the communication technology instead of providing time for communication has left us without time for anything even time to think. The electronic media has not reduced volume of printed material. Internet has not decreased air-traffic nor have e-mail and fax reduced the use of telephone. The present day culture has become the main enemy of culture. Leisure is the basis of culture but the scarce commodity in today's technology driven culture is leisure itself. Kirkpatrick Sale offers a critique of the contemporary machine age in his Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution. For a short period slightly over one year the Luddites (1812) rebelled against the Central England's law and order. Sale sees the same situation with more alarming magnitude in the new cyber age. The sheer rate of acceleration in change is disturbing and difficult for human nature to cope up with. The last 200 years may be called period of acceleration in change. The cigarette has given way to the pipe, corn flakes have pushed out from the table the traditional porridge and computers have to be replaced every year by new versions of computers (Eriksen, 2001). Is the Present Progress Real Many thinkers today ask the question whether the outward signs of progress driven by technology is a chimera that lures us into unknown perils. George Grant (1965), the Canadian philosopher, speaks of the darkness that surrounds the western world because of its long dedication to the over-coming of nature's rules. The job of the writer, according to Grant, at this time is to bring into the light that darkness as darkness. What are the gifts of technology that alarms us today as we peruse the news and watch the television Runaway murders, increasing rates of suicides, horrible mass layoffs of employees who lived in security, the squalor of poverty visible everywhere, violence in the family, trumpet calls to civil war, lethal air and water, the soil that refuses to yield crops, the alarming pandemics, the animals and plants that are becoming extinct are the symptoms of the impending malaise. Well over three decades Kirkpatrick Sale had been highlighting the impending deluge that awaits mankind due to the unbrdilded employment of technology even for the simplest of tasks thus insulating us from humanness of existence. By various terminologies Sale tries to warn mankind the dangers that have encompassed. Many alternative appellations are engaged to underpin the problem by calling it the problem with no name or technology or innovation or machinery. The engagement of technology in the service of industrialism is hurtful to human commonality and global well-being. Sale' work Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution is a vehement indictment of the modern techno-culture. The Industrial Revolution and the Cyber Revolution The central theme of Sale's works is the abiding conviction that a world dominated by the technologies of modern industrial society is basically ruinous than useful for human enrichment and existence. The level of human contentment prior to the Luddite rebellion in 1812 in England was rooted in stable family values and community life. The bulk of the lucrative export market of England was the contribution of the communities that worked on tasks that involved bodily skills and knowledge of some craft. There was human factor in production that gave some prestige to the workers. The work was interspersed by celebration of life in dance and song. Though Sale would not call the life in England to be idyllic because of the damp and crowded quarters of the workers, he argues that it was more dignified with men, women and children sharing the work of wealth production. Indeed, life was usually as bare and simple and functional as the furniture in the parlor. Nevertheless, in terms of family cohesion and self- reliancein terms of municipal fraternity and collective well-being, life in the pre-industrial England was rich. According to Sale what upset this happiness and cheer was the coming of the steam-powered factory that came from outside. The conspiracy between the capitalists, administration and the machines rang the death bell of the system. In a decade after the first machines were erected England could boast of 100,000 totally upsetting a way of life, which remained unperturbed for three hundred years. With the machines in place one man could do the work of three hundred men. Sale points out this as the most striking example of the dominion of human science over the powers of nature of which modern times can boast. The brunt of the first Industrial Revolution was born by the artisans and their dear ones in the textile districts of England. Many lost their jobs and those who found their way into the factories, as workers were virtually slaves. Earlier men worked the tools and now people should work when the engine worked. Sale argues the workers woes were not merely related to the loss of jobs alone. The workers were quick to grasp the changes that machine could do to them, The machine and the new industrialist were together creating a new order of Industrial capitalism, which was unconcerned with the well being of the worker. It was a ruthless system driven by profit where family values were given only trivial place. The Luddite movement started in the usual way by writing petitions and lodging complaints and these measures had little impact because of the hidden conspiracy between the trio, the new capitalists, machines and the administration. When the peaceful methods of achieving their end were failed the movement slowly emerged as a violent operations organized covertly and mostly occupying a tactics of hit and run to strike terror. However the ruthless suppression by the state and law indicated that the rule always is by a hidden plutocracy. Luddites rebellion was based on the strong bonds of allegiance that the workers had among themselves. But with the governments, then armed buy sophisticated weapons and well trained armies and the entire state machinery supporting the cause of the capitalist which appeared legal, Luddism had a premature death more or less by 1813 with 14 rebels strung from the gallows on a single day. The puffing and roaring of the stygial horses silenced the voice of the Luddites. Though Luddism is a story of failure of the workers against the machines, the symbolism it carries today is extremely relevant in the second Industrail Revolution which started according to Sale in the 1970's.He feels that the modern computer and the accompanying technologies are now the handmaiden of the global corporate giants who are the helmsman of the Second Industrial Revolution and its impact is global in nature. Sale enumerates the corrosive currents of Second Industrial revolution. He finds that technology is imposed on people as during the time of the Luddites. Similarly the values of the past are destroyed producing a uniform culture across the world. An important feature of the Second Industrial Revolution is the manufacture of needs and then the fulfillment of those needs by product dumping. Some call it the Coco-colonization of the world (Wagnleitner 1994). While in the past trade and commerce was between people, today the governments promote it and protective measures are in place internationally to protect trade interests. Workers now experience the ordeal that the workers felt in the times of the Luddite movement globally. Perhaps the worst part of the Second Industrial Revolution is the destruction of the Nature across the globe. Writers like Berry (1988) laments that our perception of the earth is the product of years of cultural conditioning in which we do not think ourselves as a species but as the masters of the universe with arbitrary hegemony over it. While the Luddite movement was a lone regional voice, the Neo-Luddite movement is global operations as the implications of the Second Industrial Revolutions have universal ramifications. Sale's stand in Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution is highly ambivalent. He tries to sound optimistic at the work that is done by Chellis Glendinning, Wendell Berry, Jeremy Rifkin and organizations like the Green peace. At the same time he also sounds apocalyptic at the quest for profit by the captains of industry and fears whether endless consumerism and the extent of the change that happens today would result in the collapse of civilization. Kirkpatrick Sale by the sheer weight of contribution to the current thinking to the anti-technology movements today is indeed synonymous with Neo-Ludditism. Though Neo-Ludditism has not received universal currency as a powerful movement offering a counter culture front to the techno-culture of today, there is a strong anti-technology movemtrnt across the globe. Some of the contributions of Kirkpatrick Sale have found their way into the formulations of the anti-technology movement across the globe. He vehemently argues that technological progress is shattering our economy, shriveling our society and shredding our environment (Sale, 1997). The jobs are being depersonalized, the economy that is created is artificial and there is an electronic apartheid. Because of these realities the Luddite cause is active today. Today's Neo-Luddite question is do the costs of such changes outweigh the benefits Critique of the Neo-Luddites The apocalyptic vision shared by Neo-Luddites has many critics in the world today. Many see the infinite possibility of the technologies of today for man's further adventure into space and time. They see the Neo-Luddite paradigm as cyborg envy deriving from their inability to cross the human/machine boundary. This possibility is promised by the computer technologies and their interfaces (Stone, 1991). Many technophiles who understand the Neo-Luddite paradigm, as a much needed corrective to the excessive buoyancy created by the lure of technology. But at the same time they insist on the need for making choices from among the options available to man. A view heavily dependent on the past is detrimental. Reflections on the past should only be remedial so that our future choices are flawless. Mankind needs only educations in choices that will enable him to use technology for his benefit that for his bane. Apart from choices that mankind can make there is the possibility for reform of technology through political process. There is a close relation between environment and technology. Environmental issues force the democratic reform of technology. As the harm to environment is felt consumers who are also the voters can force politics centered on technology and reform can be effected democratically (Feenberg.1999) Conclusion The first Luddite movement originated when workers had limited say in their own affairs. Now in most parts of the world, especially in the countries that depend on new technologies, there is democracy and the media to help people make decisions. It is advisable to effect democratic reform of technology for the purposes chosen democratically by the stakeholders in the drama of life. Democratic practices should be the glue that yoke together two processes the reform of technology and the renewal of the milieu of man's life. ============ Works cited. Berry Thomas (1988) The Dream of the Earth, Sierra Club Books, and San Francisco. Eriksen Hylland Thomson (2001): Tyranny of the Moment; Pluto Press. Feenberg, A. (1999) Questioning Technology. London: Routledge. Grant G. (1965) Lament for a Nation. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Information technology: Boon or bane (1997, January-February). The Futurist, pp. 10-15. Hook B. Ernest (2002) Prematurely in Scientific Discovery: On Resistance and Neglect. University of California Press Berkeley, CA. Sale Kirkpatrick. (1995) Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution Stone Allucquere Rosanne, (1991)."Will The Real Body Please Stand Up," in Michael Benedikt, ed., Cyberspace: First Steps, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Reinhold Wagnleitner (1994). Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War. Translated by Diana M. Wolf. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Read More