Unless you have specifically read up about the labor rights of Luddites you really dont know what you are talking about when you throw the word Luddite around (I know I didn’t)
“[T]he Luddites did indeed understand the advantages which mechanization would bring,” Raymond Boudon, a sociologist at Paris-Sorbonne University, wrote in his Analysis of Ideology, citing the work of influential historian Lewis Coser. But “their machine-wrecking was an attempt to show the owners of the new textile mills that they were a force to be reckoned with, that they had a ‘nuisance value’. By acting in this way, their main objective was to gain concessions from the employers.”
The Luddites weren’t technophobes, then. They were labor strategists.
“This strategic interpretation of the Luddite movement is confirmed by the fact that the workers often destroyed only those machines which were turning out faulty goods,” Boudon wrote. “It was still true, of course, that a worker who went on strike could easily be replaced by somebody from the army of unemployed people willing to be strike-breakers, at a time when nascent trade-unionism was harshly suppressed. Since machine-breaking brought the factory to a halt, it was not only a functional substitute for striking, it was also much more effective.”
Except the Luddites didn’t hate machines either—they were gifted artisans resisting a capitalist takeover of the production process that would irreparably harm their communities, weaken their collective bargaining power, and reduce skilled workers to replaceable drones as mechanized as the machines themselves. Their struggle has been tragically warped into a caricature when it is more relevant than ever.
AI has uses when it’s not being rammed down peoples throats or used to plagiarize content (personal assistant/home automation type stuff is the first that comes to mind - I’d like to eventually set up a locally-hosted LLM based alternative to Alexa to control my house so I’m not relying on an internet connection for everything).
Cloud is an essential part of a robust backup strategy, and makes it easier for the average person to create a web presence.
Tesla, being an EV company, is still an important interim solution to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ICE vehicles until (hopefully) better public transit infra is built so people don’t need to use cars as much. Not to mention it was the kick-starter for other vehicle companies to make EVs.
Ads and paywalls: People gotta eat. You want to consume content that someone produces as their job? Pay them. If you won’t someone else will, thus advertisements.
AI can write boilerplate code and test cases with a failure rate so low that it saves a significant amount of time. It’s also good summarizing text, like a 1 month old back and forth support ticket. Probably other uses too, but those are the ones I use a lot.
Cloud is a huge accelerator for any company that doesn’t want or can’t afford to hire dedicated experts. Plus for workloads with big peaks and valleys it is actually much cheaper.
Screens show navigation, provide entertainment and allow changing complex setting much more easily than other UIs. (turning volume down is not a complex setting)
Teslas have incredible performance per dollar (in a straight line) and are very fun to drive daily. Also their software and charging network are great. And are cheap to maintain (and to buy used).
Ads allow content to be consumed without monetary exchange while still paying the workers creating that content in money instead of exposure.
same for paywalls, journalism is very important for society and good journalists deserve a good paycheck. Paywalls allow to have well paid journalists without billionaires sponsoring (manipulating) and allowing people who don’t like ads to still have access to their work.
Get out of here with your nuance, don’t you realize you’re on the Internet?!
In all seriousness, thanks. I think what a lot of people tend to forget is none of these things are inherently bad. They’re just often misused and/or overused, typically due to the insatiable capitalist profit motive.
Being able to feel controls instead of having to look at them while driving is key, but some of you take this to Luddite levels.
Dear Lemmy and the fediverse as a whole.
Unless you have specifically read up about the labor rights of Luddites you really dont know what you are talking about when you throw the word Luddite around (I know I didn’t)
https://www.vice.com/en/article/luddites-definition-wrong-labor-technophobe/
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/06/the-luddites-were-right
Welcome to lemmy. AI bad. Cloud bad. Screens bad. Tesla terrible. Ad-based monetization the literal devil. Paywalls, the devil’s brother.
Do any of those things have redeeming qualities?
AI has uses when it’s not being rammed down peoples throats or used to plagiarize content (personal assistant/home automation type stuff is the first that comes to mind - I’d like to eventually set up a locally-hosted LLM based alternative to Alexa to control my house so I’m not relying on an internet connection for everything).
Cloud is an essential part of a robust backup strategy, and makes it easier for the average person to create a web presence.
Tesla, being an EV company, is still an important interim solution to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ICE vehicles until (hopefully) better public transit infra is built so people don’t need to use cars as much. Not to mention it was the kick-starter for other vehicle companies to make EVs.
Ads and paywalls: People gotta eat. You want to consume content that someone produces as their job? Pay them. If you won’t someone else will, thus advertisements.
Absolutely.
Get out of here with your nuance, don’t you realize you’re on the Internet?!
In all seriousness, thanks. I think what a lot of people tend to forget is none of these things are inherently bad. They’re just often misused and/or overused, typically due to the insatiable capitalist profit motive.
The main issue with these is their proponents have a lack of nuance.