Name: Rebels against the future
ISBN: 9780201407181

Rebels against the future

This is the story of a bold uprising by the earliest victims of the first Industrial Revolution, viewed from the perspective of today's second Industrial Revolution, a vivid reminder that the current turmoil, driven by rapidly developing technologies and the global economy, is every bit as disruptive as the one created by the steam engine and laissez-faire. Rebels Against the Future is a work of careful scholarship, but it is also an exciting tale of people whose resistance to technology was so dramatic that their name has entered our vernacular. "Luddite" today refers to anyone unmoved by laptop computers and cellular phones, but this book reminds us that the Luddites were in fact real people, English working men who saw their livelihoods and homes, their communities and countryside, destroyed by the onrush of industrial capitalism.

What Hacker News says

shafoshafFeb 2026

I suppose I could just tell you what I'm feeling, not the op. The fun was bringing down the fire. That is INCREDIBLY fun! That feels valuable. That feels like you are helping others.

Now, the mountain is gone. All the skills I learned to navigate it are becoming obsolete. Sure, tools get better, new models are adopted, but it didn't wipe out the mountain. When the world move from the 90s to the Internet age, I took my pitons, backpack, and rope and started climbing higher. I felt like I was empowered to bring MORE fire down to MORE people.

With vibe coding getting better and better, I still have my leadership skills, my ability to understand navigation, and all those skills, but the value and joy of climbing isn't quite there. There is a road leading to the top of the mountain and cars go up there all the time.

That is more than just change. That is something the Luddites faced: it wasn't technology and mass production they decried, it was a loss of identity. Kirkpatrick Sale's "Rebels Against The Future" is an awesome history of the luddites and I think it is very relevant today.

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bwbMar 2025

You might check out

Ghost Work By Mary L. Gray, Siddharth Suri https://shepherd.com/book/ghost-work

"Hidden beneath the surface of the web, lost in our wrong-headed debates about AI, a new menace is looming. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri team up to unveil how services delivered by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast, invisible human labor force. These people doing "ghost work" make the internet seem smart. They perform high-tech piecework: flagging X-rated content, proofreading, designing engine parts, and much more. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked at least once in this “ghost economy,” and that number is growing. They usually earn less than legal minimums for traditional work, they have no health benefits, and they can be fired at any time for any reason, or none."

This is a bit recent though, but still helpful for a modern big picture perspective.

Rise of the Robots By Martin Ford https://shepherd.com/book/rise-of-the-robots

This one I haven't read yet, but I've heard it tries to look historically as it looks at this concept.

And then of course, you have the historic luddites :)

Rebels Against the Future By Kirkpatrick Sale Book cover of Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age https://shepherd.com/book/rebels-against-the-future

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larsiusprimeAug 2015

Required reading anytime someone invokes the word "Luddite": http://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Against-The-Future-Industrial/d...

Enclosure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure) is suspiciously never mentioned whenever the Luddites are invoked. It's not as simple as "technology took muh job, rar!" -- it's more like "hey, this common land that used to belong to all of us has been forcibly taken away and given to this guy with a factory who now gets to be super productive and take away our livelihoods, but he doesn't have to share any of the increased wealth he now enjoys."

Technology undoubtedly increases productivity and wealth. The question is, WHO gets to own that wealth and what gives them a right to it.

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larsiusprimeMar 2016

Three claims, let's evaluate:

"inbred" seems to have a factual basis, that's fair.

"luddite" in this context is an unnecessarily loaded term that suggests an ignorance of history. (I.E., the luddites [1] were not simplistically anti-technology, they were anti-"the crown suddenly taking away the common land and giving it to rich capitalists to enrich themselves with industry while displacing us as laborers, and then blaming us for being against progress", ie, "Enclosure.') [2]

"abuse their children" requires proof. Is there evidence the amish abuse their children at a rate higher than the rest of society, and/or other cultural enclaves such as tight-nit immigrant groups?

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Against-The-Future-Industrial/d... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

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