The Luddittes were a group of people who, whether they fully knew it or not, were visionaries of the human consequences of mechanization. The Luddites are generally associated with the early 1800’s, in the middle of the industrial revolution, whereupon they destroyed factory based mechanized processes particularly those found in textile mills. They probably did so for primarily selfish reasons – they didn’t want to be out of a job.
The industrial revolution was in essence the result of development in the understanding of science, in particular energy and the ability to exploitation that energy along with the discovery/realization of abundant, easily extracted energy sources – coal and oil.
But it is a great pity they failed. I feel this because I believe the mechanization/automation we have today has overall, lead to a much worse human society than would have been the case. I have no crystal ball, but I do know mechanization and automation have lead to a military capability that would be extremely difficult to equal or surpass otherwise.
As so the the modern age.
My workplace recently introduced a finger(print) scanner to ‘clock-in’. I am going to refuse to use it. Hence I’m a neoLuddite. I’m not sure what the consequences will be, and I am very sure my reasons will carry no weight whatsoever. But I am extremely tired of unthinking {that is simply meant as a statement of truth. In no way should be be taken as an insult, because it is certainly NOT said for the purposes of insulting} people just following the ‘flow’ of society which I am sure WILL only have negative consequences to later generations. History shows mankind – does it not? – that if there is ‘something’ that can be used to gain an advantage over people, then there are some who will seek to capture/acquire/possess/monopolize that ‘something’
That ‘something’ is electronic data.
And don’t even for a second dare parrot out the “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear”. That’s exactly the kind of unthinking regurgitation-without-thought of someone else’s incorrect and hollow catchphrase which annoys me so much. Personally speaking, whether I have something to hide or not, I simply don’t want anything of my life to be available for others to view – other than what I want them to see, and I don’t want ANY information about me to be viewable and manipulable by any other person. Sadly there is info about me already out there, but I don’t want to exacerbate the problem.
Besides, the human trait of ‘ dignity‘ alone dictates that privacy is essential to humans.
For some years now, I have been of the opinion that the more electronic data we have, the less privacy we will have and the more that data will be used by the evil powers that be – that means governments folks! The idiots in society believe the answer is greater cyber security, e.g. data encryption. I totally disagree. The NATURE of electronic information makes it inherently insecure. The answer to e-information theft and fraud is to have LESS of it, a Luddite concept if you will.
I am not going to have my fingerprint data stuck on some crappy machine that even a little kid could download, or for some spooky individuals to try and frame me with something should the desire take them. Neither do I want someone using that information to try and defraud me.
What brought all this on? The BBC/BBZ article about a part of Britain’s “intelligence” network sponsoring a prize for what it calls “Cyber Security”. The winner is quoted as saying
“We’re going into an age of cyberwarfare… it’s very important that there are experts out there that can keep people safe” – Jonathan Millican UK Cyber Security Champion
Source: http://w~~~ww.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17333601 (remove the three tilda’s in www)
Come on, that BS. GCHQ doesn’t give a rats arse about keeping people safe. Thy expect me to believe the very godless scum that keeps almost half the population on less than $10 a day and 1 billion people hungry each day are to be trusted to keep the people safe????? How utterly ridiculous. Well, maybe not that ridiculous – it actually does want to keep some people safe: the people safe who threaten the safety of most ordinary people on the planet. The kind of scum that gets a thrill out of killing innocent Afghan people while sponges off the people and one day may be the King of Britain.
I predict like the Luddites of old that I too will fail, but I’d rather resist and fail than to jellyfish out and fail.
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