Rage Against the Machine

The Luddite revolution. Plus recommendations and clerihews.

Sep 23, 2024

The Week

The Luddites have much to teach us about Large Language Models. I reflect on that this week. Also, I’m now making recommendations of blogs I follow and other things I think might interest you. These are actual recommendations, not paid advertising. Plus Star Trek (TOS) clerihews! You love clerihews, don’t you?

Image of the Week

It’s a cow. I greet her on my daily walks. So she’s part of Swaine’s World.

Quote of the Week

“George’s worry was not that machines might become all-powerful themselves, but that those machines’ owners would use them to accumulate power and wealth at his expense.”
— George Mellor, a skilled garment worker threatened by automation in the 18th Century, quoted in Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant.

Recommendations of the Week

Advanced Geekery with David Gewirtz
David knows what he’s blogging about. He’s been an editor, columnist, software developer, cybersecurity expert, and a lot more. Advanced Geekery looks at new tech products and developments, and is always insightful. A recent post covered the Apple announcements, including the AirPod hearing aids, a warning for Fusion users, a 3D-printed full-sized boat, Google’s special AI processors, and Jell-O furniture. I follow it regularly.

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant
“The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods.”

More about the book here:

The Luddites

Two weeks ago, I began a fresh look at the history of AI, and I promised to dive back into its prehistory, specifically the automation that threatened jobs in the 18th Century. There is a book that tells that story, and I reviewed it earlier this year, and I can keep that promise most efficiently by revisiting part of that post.

If everyone who has ever used the word “Luddite” would just go and read Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, we could have more productive arguments about the legitimate concerns we have — or should have — regarding artificial intelligence.

The Luddites have been misjudged throughout history. Today the term is routinely used as a pejorative, describing someone blindly and indiscriminately hostile to technology:

Emilio Esteves: “I’m not a Luddite, but I’m outside more than I’m on my computer.”
Elton John: “I am such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano.”
Studs Terkel: “I’m not a Luddite completely; I believe in refrigerators to cool my martinis.”

In fact, the Luddites were not anti-technology: they were more anti-starvation. Merchant tells the real story of the Luddites and shows how their rebellion has parallels with the current fears about big tech. And that shouldn’t be surprising, because we’re facing the same Monster.

Toward the end of the 18th century, the most important industry in Britain was wool. Wool was the primary fiber used in clothing, and weavers were “the largest single group of industrial workers in England,” historian E. P. Thompson said. The wool trade employed over a million workers.

These were skilled workers — masters of spinning and knitting and weaving and carding — but “skilled work” needs to be understood in the 18th century context. These weavers or carders were descended from generations of weavers or carders. Their particular skills had been a mainstays of their families for hundreds of years. We think casually today of changing careers and learning new skills, but in 18th century Britain, these skills were literally a livelihood — it was how they made a living, in the only life they knew.

And their skilled work was increasingly being replaced by machines. But couldn’t they just learn to run the machines? You know the argument: automation doesn’t replace workers, it just gives them the chance to become more productive. But no: these skilled workers wouldn’t be hired to run the machines, because no skill was required for that task. A child could do it — and in eighteenth century England, that was not a figure of speech.

So the fabric workers, desperate and at their wits’ end, began smashing the machines. They started a revolution, a revolution that nearly became a civil war. And they had a leader, even if he was only a fiction. Ned Ludd, the machine smasher, striking his blow and then retreating to Sherwood Forest to await his next opportunity to strike, was the legendary leader in whose name the Luddites fought the Monster.

Toward the end of the book, Merchant draws the parallels with the present day, and the implications for the rollout of Generative Artificial Intelligence. In future posts, I hope to examine these issues.

I may be giving the impression that Merchant’s book is a dry academic story. It is anything but that. It’s an adventure story whose colorful characters include the likes of Lord Byron. I recommend it highly.

That said, of the many reasons to read Merchant’s book, I have focused here only on the most obvious: the correct understanding of Ludditism. I do so out of a concern for getting our terms and our facts right. Today we’re swimming against a torrent of disinformation that will only be amplified by artificial intelligence. And not only will AI magnify the disinformation we’re already dealing with, the information we’re getting about AI itself will in turn be subject to disinformation, hype, and hysteria.

I’ll try not to contribute to that.

Of Interest

When I was editor of Dr. Dobb’s Journal, we had a section in the back of the magazine titled “Of Interest.” Here are some things that I think you might find Of Interest.

First Verses

I occasionally write poems. Sonnets, Villanelles, Limericks, light verse. Here are three clerihews on a common theme.

James Tiberius Kirk
Had a quirk
Of overstressing the deuterium fusion reactors
And the actors.

Leonard Horatio McCoy
Did not enjoy
Reflecting that these words would be our enduring memory of him:
“He’s dead, Jim.”

Chief Science Officer S’chn T’gai Spock
Solid as a rock
Performed as rationally and analytically as a quadratic equation
Except on occasion.

Who, Me?

I’ve been a writer all my life, and computers entered the picture pretty early. With Paul Freiberger I wrote the seminal history of the personal computer, Fire in the Valley, the basis for the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. I’ve written short stories and poetry and books and columns for magazines, and have had a long and productive career editing books and magazines. For decades I was associated with the pioneering personal computer software developers’ magazine, Dr. Dobb’s Journal, and I currently edit books for The Pragmatic Bookshelf and blog about artificial intelligence and other topics.

Coming Attractions

Thanks for reading. You can read all the back issues of Swaine’s World at my blog home. In the coming weeks, look for more Swaine’s Flames flashbacks, Dirt Road Diaries, bulletins from the AI revolution, tech history, and books.