Brian Merchant’s “Blood In the Machine”

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 20:00:30 +1100

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://doctorow.medium.com/brian-merchants-blood-in-the-machine-a666e61846b1>

"In Blood In the Machine, Brian Merchant delivers the definitive history of
the Luddites, and the clearest analysis of the automator’s playbook, where
“entrepreneurs’” lawless extraction from workers is called “innovation” and
“inevitable”:

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

History is written by the winners, and so you probably think of the Luddites as
brainless, terrified, thick-fingered vandals who smashed machines and burned
factories because they didn’t understand them. Today, “Luddite” is a slur that
means “technophobe” — but that’s neither fair, nor accurate.

Luddism has been steadily creeping into pro-labor technological criticism, as
workers and technology critics reclaim the term and its history, which is a
rich and powerful tale of greed versus solidarity, slavery versus freedom."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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