“I have a reputation as being anti-technology; in fact, as being something of a neo-Luddite. People who have labeled me as such usually know nothing about the Luddites. If they did, they wouldn’t use the term unless they mean to compliment me. In any case, to come to the point, I regard it as stupid to be anti-technology. That would be something like being anti-food. We need technology to live, as we need food to live. But, of course, if we eat too much food, or eat food that has no nutritional value, or eat food that is infected with disease, we turn a means of survival into its opposite. The same may be said of our technology.” – Neil Postman
Anyone who has publicly voiced opposition, or even mild skepticism, towards the output of the tech industry is likely to have found themselves called a “Luddite” for doing so. And that label probably wasn’t meant as a compliment. Rather, “Luddite” is usually deployed as a way of accusing someone of falling somewhere between foolish pastoralism and unthinking technophobia, while further suggesting that their resistance is futile and that they are bound to be left behind.
Certainly, there are some who have tried to rehabilitate the term “Luddite” and ground it in its historic origins in order to turn the title into a badge of oppositional honor…but despite these noble efforts, for the most part the term largely continues to either be flung around as an outright epithet or deployed as a sort of a self-deprecating confession. Indeed, for every person who proudly knows all the words to “The Triumph of General Ludd” there are probably a hundred who have been called “Luddites” for daring to gently critique a tech company.
You don’t like Facebook? Luddite! You haven’t invested in cryptocurrencies? Luddite! You think there’s something creepy about smart glasses? Luddite! You don’t like AI? Luddite!
And yet, it may well be, that those who are joining their voices and their actions to the growing opposition towards AI genuinely deserve to be called Luddites. However, this is not because they are foolish pastoralists or unthinking technophobes, but because in this case there are some noteworthy parallels between the current movement against AI and the historic Luddites. And to blithely dismiss of anti-AI voices as epithetic Luddites is to risk missing what is so significant about this movement and this moment.
To say it again: for many years now, anyone who has publicly voiced opposition, or even mild skepticism, towards the output of the tech industry is likely to have found themselves derided as a “Luddite” for doing so…however, that accusation just doesn’t quite land with much force at a point in time when many people seem to find the idea of taking a sledgehammer to AI rather appealing.
All of which is to say, that the real question in this moment is not whether anti-AI folks embrace (or should embrace) the title of “Luddite,” but whether they are (knowingly or not) embracing a philosophy of Luddism.
Of (historical) Luddites
If one wants to argue that there is more to the term “Luddite” than just an insult, it is usually necessary to revisit the origins of that term. Namely, the workers from early 19th-century England who were genuinely known as Luddites. Those interested in a detailed history of the Luddite uprisings can find a number of books (including some recent ones) on the subject; however, a short summary can still hammer home the essential points.
Here is an abbreviated history:
Not just workers, but skilled craft workers, the Luddites saw their trades threatened by mechanization, at the dawn of the industrial revolution, and feared that the imposition of these new machines would bring an end to their crafts and the livelihoods associated with them. Though the Luddites would become known for the tactic of breaking these “obnoxious” machines (as they often described this machinery), that was not their first tactic; rather they had first appealed to parliament to defend their craft, and only turned to machine breaking after their pleas went ignored. The Luddite risings were not the acts of a ragtag group of ne’er do wells, but occurred with considerable community support, with the Luddites being recognized simultaneously as members of their communities and defending the broader interests of those communities.
The Luddites did not simply go about smashing every piece of machinery they could find, but instead wielded their hammers against particular factories at which the factory owners were using the new machines as a reason to lower workers’ wages. In many cases, factory owners were given an opportunity (or a warning) to come to an agreement with their workers; and it was in the cases when such factory owners refused to come to terms with their workers that they found their machines broken. Importantly, this tactic proved to be fairly successful, as many factory owners agreed to pay better wages, or to keep wages the same, or to not introduce the offending machinery at all…and in cases where factory owners refused, well, there is a reason the Luddites are known for breaking machines. The Luddite risings did not end because the machines inevitably triumphed, instead the Luddites were quashed by legal and military force: soldiers were deployed to the tumultuous regions and parliament made machine breaking punishable by death or transportation.
The above summary, which is based predominantly on E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Workign Class, is an abbreviated one. However, it is a clipped history that aims to draw attention to a few essential things to keep in mind regarding the historic Luddites.
There are really four key things to keep in mind. First: the Luddites were not opposed to technology itself, but were rather directing their ire at specific machines in specific factories; with the attacks on those machines being less about the machinery itself and more about the intentions of the owners of that machinery. Second: machine breaking was not the initial tactic of the Luddites, nor was it their only tactic, and before they took hammers to machines the Luddites had first taken their concerns to parliament. Third: though the Luddite movement operated under a certain degree of secrecy, it was a movement grounded in the communities from which it came, with those communities generally sharing in the Luddite’s concerns. Fourth: the Luddites were not defeated by the inevitability of technological progress, rather they were defeated by state force (and the threat of state violence); and even after the Luddites were suppressed machine-breaking would be a tactic that continued to be practiced in the following decades (notably in the “Swing Riots”). All of which is to say, if you’re trying to make sense of the Luddites actions you would do well to keep in mind that the historian Eric Hobsbawm described their actions as a form of “collective bargaining by riot.”
Or, to put it simply, the Luddites were workers who saw that targeting (some of) their employers’ new machines was a way of ensuring that their voices were heard.
Granted, important though this history may be, when someone gets called (or calls themselves) a Luddite chances are they are not suggesting someone (or they themselves) is a skilled craft worker from the turn of the 19th century engaged in proto-union activity.
Which brings us to the next point…
Of Luddites and Luddism
When surveying the works that have been written about the historic Luddites it is clear that there are some who are more sympathetic and there are some who are less sympathetic towards General Ludd’s “army of redressers.” There are some who see them as proto-unionists, some who see them as carriers of a more radical anarchic spark, and some who see them as fools standing in the way of progress. And sympathy or loathing towards the historic Luddites and their deeds, does not map as neatly onto contemporary “left/right” political divides as some may think. Nevertheless, even as various individuals will argue over the exact reasons that led the Luddites to engage in machine breaking; there is little disagreement about the fact that the Luddites engaged in machine breaking. However, this just raises a larger and much more difficult question, namely: did the Luddites actually have some sort of broader philosophy of technology?
Or, to put it differently, were the Luddites in possession of a recognizable philosophy/ideology that could be called Luddism?
This question may seem unimportant at first glance, but it is one of the core questions that undergirds the discussions about the Luddites that have followed ever since the initial Luddite risings were suppressed. After all, as was noted previously, whether the term is meant as an insult or an honorific when someone is called a Luddite they are not being called a skilled craft worker from the turn of the 19th century England. Instead, again as insult or honorific, the term Luddite is meant to carry with it a suggestion that someone has a certain attitude towards technology. In other words, to call someone a Luddite is to suggest that behind their actions and deeds there is some kind of philosophy/ideology/viewpoint that could ostensibly be called Luddism.
So, to ask it again, were the Luddites in possession of something that could be called Luddism?
This, alas, is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
The Luddites operated under a fair amount of secrecy, and Luddite activities were spread out over a considerable area. In terms of what they left behind, what remains of the Luddites are primarily the tales of their deeds, alongside a decent number of the threatening letters that they sent which have been preserved. Which is to say, that the historic Luddites left behind no “Luddite manifesto.” There is no (historic) Luddite equivalent to the Magna Carta, or Declaration of Independence, or Communist Manifesto, or Declaration of the Rights of Woman, or Combahee River Collective Statement, or DADA Manifesto, or any other document that clearly lays out the views/principles of a movement. As was noted, the Luddites did leave behind a fair number of letters (most of these being the threats sent to factory owners), but it is difficult to look at these anonymous letters (many of which were supposedly authored by Ned Ludd) and conclude that the messages contained therein were genuinely representative of the views of the entire movement. While there is good reason to believe that those who participated in the Luddite risings swore oaths of secrecy, there is considerably less reason to believe that they swore oaths to a party platform that included specific attitudes towards technology.
It may be that the historic Luddites were too caught up in the struggle of their moment to sit down and fully develop a philosophy for their movement (and a philosophy of technology). Though, as Peter Linebaugh argued in Ned Ludd & Queen Mab, the historic Luddites were likely familiar with the various political ideologies/manifestos circulating at their time. Nevertheless, it should also be noted that at the point in history when the Luddites were rising that our modern notion of “technology” had not yet been developed (case in point: the work widely regarded as the first philosophy of technology [Ernst Kapp’s Elements of a Philosophy of Technology] was not published until 1877). The historic Luddites obviously did some very specific things to some machines, but when the term Luddite gets thrown around today (for good and for bad) the term generally has less to do with what direct actions an individual is taking in regards to the introduction of new machinery and more to do with the more philosophical question of how one should live surrounded by machinery.
This shift from Luddite to Luddism is what bubbles up in Thomas Pynchon’s 1984, New York Times essay, “Is it OK To Be A Luddite?” In which he noted, in contrast to the original Luddites:
“But we now live, we are told, in the Computer Age. What is the outlook for Luddite sensibility? Will mainframes attract the same hostile attention as knitting frames once did? I really doubt it…Machines have already become so user-friendly that even the most unreconstructed of Luddites can be charmed into laying down the old sledgehammer and stroking a few keys instead.”
By the time Pynchon was publishing these words in the New York Times, numerous figures had been filling bookshelves, and newspaper columns, and lecture halls with their commentaries on what some went so far as to term “technological society.” And in contrast to the historic Luddites who saw certain machines as a threat to their livelihoods, Pynchon gestured to the rather different challenge of how easy it was to be “charmed” by the gadgets of “the Computer Age.” After recognizing the “contempt” the term Luddite evoked, Pynchon continued:
“Luddites today are no longer faced with human factory owners and vulnerable machines. As well-known President and unintentional Luddite D.D. Eisenhower prophesied when he left office, there is now a permanent power establishment of admirals, generals, and corporate CEOs, up against whom us average poor bastards are completely outclassed, although Ike didn’t put it that way. We are all supposed to keep tranquil and allow it to go on, even though, because of the data revolution, it becomes every day less possible to fool any of the people any of the time. If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will come—you heard it here first—when the curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology, and robotics all converge. Oboy.”
More than forty years after Pynchon asked “Is It OK to Be A Luddite?” we find ourselves at least partially at the moment of the “great challenge” he had predicted: when developments in artificial intelligence are once again raising the specter of the Luddites. Given the spread of anti-AI sentiments (which often seem to be tipping over into a broader critique of computing technologies) it seems that the “outlook for Luddite sensibility” is pretty favorable at the moment.
And yet, the question remains of how one is to define “Luddite sensibility”?
It is to this matter which we shall now turn.
“Luddite sensibility” (or, notes towards a philosophy of Luddism)
You don’t have to be a Luddite to admit that there has been a time when you’ve been seized by an urge to take a sledgehammer and smash your smartphone or computer to smithereens. Such a momentary desire likely carried with it a certain cathartic thrill—a momentary fantasy of being freed from emails or spreadsheets or notifications or influencers or endless scrolling or whatever it is that you the reader (yes, you the person reading this right now) find most infuriating. And yet, as fun as it may be to sometimes fantasize about hitting your computer with a hammer, it’s easy to understand that there is a significant difference between a moment of frustration leading you to playfully fantasize about dismantling your machine, and the broader question of how to think about the machines (and the people behind them) that are dismantling society.
As was noted before, the historic Luddites did not leave behind a manifesto that clearly outlined what it means to be a Luddite. However, there is a passage from one of the surviving letters that provides a strong foundation upon which to build out such a philosophy. With the origins of this document providing a meaningful connection between the original Luddites and those who would seek to make use of that title today. The lines in question are excerpted from a longer letter which is included in Kevin Binfield’s essential collection of primary source documents The Writings of the Luddites, the lines are as follows:
“We will never lay down our Arms. The House of Commons passes an Act to put down Machinery hurtful to Commonality, and repeal that to hang Frame Breakers. But We. We petition no more that won’t do fighting must.”
Clearly, the above lines (which were signed by someone donning the mask of Ned Ludd) feature a variety of references to the specific historic conditions of the original Luddites. Case in point: the reference to “The House of Commons” and the line about “repeal that to hang Frame Breakers” point to the way the Luddites had tried (and failed) to gain support from parliament, and how once the risings began that it was made a hanging offense to engage in frame breaking. However, the above passage still includes seven words upon which a broader “Luddite sensibility” or philosophy of Luddism can be built, and one that can carry weight more than 200 years after those lines were written, specifically:
“put down Machinery hurtful to Commonality.”
There’s a wonderful sort of straightforwardness to that phrase, and one that packs as much punch as a hammer blow, while simultaneously being not nearly as blunt an instrument as a hammer. But if you are searching for the key “Luddite sensibility” or a key precept upon which to build out a broader philosophy of Luddism, you’d be hard pressed to do better than “put down Machinery hurtful to Commonality.” Sure, the phrase could still undergo some slight tweaking to make it flow better—turn it into “down with Machinery hurtful to Commonality” or “I oppose Machinery hurtful to Commonality” or “to hell with Machinery hurtful to Commonality”—but the specific four word sequence of “Machinery hurtful to Commonality” carries in abbreviated form a powerful critique.
Right from the outset the usefulness of the phrase is made clear in the way that it refutes the lazy accusations of technophobia. After all, the phrase is not “put down Machinery” full stop, or “put down [ALL] Machinery;” rather the phrase is “put down Machinery hurtful to Commonality” which immediately shifts the focus from opposition to technology (as such) to opposition to technology that is deemed “hurtful.” Granted, the “hurtful” term precedes another key part of the formulation: “to Commonality.” Now, “Commonality” can be a bit of a clunky term, even as it still conjures up basic notions of a broader society. While at first glance the term can seem to refer to things that are common/similar among individuals, or things held in “common” by those people, it is also a term that refers to the proverbial “common people.” Here, some of the etymology of the term comes into play, where the “commonalty/commonality” was a term used for distinguishing the “common people” from the “quality” (the wealthy and nobility). All of which is an overly complicated way of explaining that the phrase basically means: “down with Machinery hurtful to common people.”
And if you’re looking for the basic principle of Luddism—arguably then, and now—there you have it: “down with machinery hurtful to common people.”
Of course, things do wind up getting more complicated from this point. After all, how does one define what machinery is “hurtful to common people”? What do you do in situations where the “common people” disagree about whether or not something is “hurtful”? Don’t all of these references to “common people” mean that we’re all bound to have that song by Pulp stuck in our heads? What exactly does it mean to “put down” the machinery in question (does it mean completely dismantle it or just regulate it)? How do you weigh the helpful against the hurtful? How much of worldwide humanity needs to be considered here? What do you do when something is “hurtful” to some “common people” but “helpful” to other “common people”? To be clear, these are important and complicated questions that a more fully developed philosophy of Luddism (and a genuine Luddite movement) will need to contend with; however, being able to repeatedly return to the core principle of “put down Machinery hurtful to Commonality” at the very least keeps the focus on harms, on those harmed, and emphasizes that those being harmed should have a say in the matter.
And here it may be useful to go beyond the historic Luddites, and to include a perspective from one of those who was engaging in the work of trying to go from the Luddites to Luddism. In his punchy analysis of the Luddites (from 1995), Progress Without People, David Noble argued that the tactic for which the Luddites became famous was much less unique than it is often presumed. As Noble documents throughout that short book, the use of machine breaking as a tactic has a lengthy international history that both precedes the Luddites and extends after them. While Noble’s book is worth reading for his exploration of the tactic, the book’s broader contribution to a potential philosophy of Luddism hinges upon the way that he contextualizes the actions of the frame breakers. As Noble put it:
“In reality, the Luddites were perhaps the last people in the West to perceive technology in the present tense and to act upon that perception.”
It is Noble’s emphasis here on seeing “technology in the present tense” that can act as a useful compliment to “put down Machinery hurtful to Commonality.” For this focus on “the present tense” provides the space to push back on the sorts of utopian claims that are so often made about what this or that technology might do in the future, and brings the attention back to what these technologies are doing to people in the present. This attention does not mean that nothing should be made of future harms and future risks, but it also pushes for the discussion to be grounded in the present. Instead of asking what a given technology may do (for good or for ill), this focus on the present puts the emphasis on what that technology is doing.
A philosophy of Luddism that is worthy of being called a philosophy of Luddism will require further development, and it will certainly be the work of many people. Furthermore, it will certainly have to wrestle with some thornier points (paramount among them being whether the machinery of computing [broadly defined] is “hurtful,” and to whether “put down” means “regulate” or “put in an appropriate place” or “dismantle”). Fortunately, there are clearly quite a few people having these discussions, and there are quite a few thinkers from the past whose work can be drawn on in fleshing out these discussions.
Nevertheless, if you ever find yourself needing to quickly define Luddism and what Luddites stand for, it’s hard to do much better than: Luddites believe we should “put down Machinery hurtful to Commonality.”
And there is some reason to believe that sentiment is already resonating quite widely.
You can’t spell “Machinery hurtful to Commonality” without the letters A and I
In the past, those who voiced opposition, or skepticism, towards the output of the tech industry were likely to find themselves derided as “Luddites” for doing so. In the present, those who voice opposition, or skepticism, towards the output of the AI industry—and AI itself—are likely to find themselves and their opinions pretty much accepted. To call AI unpopular at the moment is probably something of an understatement.
Whether it’s the chorus of angry people and artists denouncing AI generated “slop” (and boycotting companies that use it; or educators loudly warning about the real-time impacts they are seeing a reliance on AI having on their students; or local groups successfully organizing against the construction of AI-related data centers in their communities; or political leaders (from across the ideological spectrum) openly questioning the promised benefits of AI for their constituents, or activists highlighting the connection between AI and the creation of an all-encompassing high-tech panopticon; or polling and survey data showing widespread opposition to AI itself, alongside calls for strong regulation; or the fact that the mainstream press is providing coverage of these aforementioned groups in a fairly sympathetic way…it is becoming pretty clear that you can oppose AI without being denounced as a Luddite.
While it would be unwise to ignore the different ideologies and motivations that undergird various types of AI opposition, perhaps the most straightforward explanation is that people are hearing the sorts of things the executives of AI companies (and prominent AI boosters) are saying…and they don’t like what they’re hearing. Sure, there are the promises of how AI will help with this or that, but it seems that the AI related promises that are circulating the most widely are the ones that suggest either AI will result in massive layoffs, or AI will result in some sort of apocalyptic scenario that results in mass death. And, to be clear, one can (and should) be skeptical of these hyperbolic claims while still recognizing that one of the reasons so many people are worried about these sorts of scenarios is because they keep hearing about them from the very people who are ostensibly building these systems.
Of course, beyond these worrisome future scenarios, there are plenty of other AI-related developments that are likely to give people pause. Meta announcing that they will soon be rolling out AI facial recognition in their creepy smart glasses (raising concerns about surveillance and privacy). Grok being used to generate sexually exploitative material (with Grok being only a particularly flagrant example of AI being used for such purposes). Concerns about cases of AI being integrated into policing systems resulting in innocent people being imprisoned. Widespread concerns about the energy usage, pollution, and noise coming from data centers. And growing worries about how AI is being incorporated into military systems. In other words, one can be skeptical of the “no more jobs” and “no more humans” claims, and still find plenty of reasons to express distaste towards AI.
And yet, in looking at these various critiques and sources of worry, it seems that one way that all of them could be summarized is that people are looking at AI—what it is already doing and what it is threatening to do—and concluding that AI is “Machinery hurtful to Commonality.”
In case after case after case, whether it has to do with the impacts on jobs, the threat to human life, the demands of data centers, the impact on students, or turning human culture into “slop,” what emerges is a sense that in many different ways AI is hurtful to “Commonality” in terms of being hurtful to “common people” and in terms of being hurtful to what is common and what is held in common. And to the extent that AI boosters push back about the supposed benefits, this largely seems to be countered by a prevailing sentiment that any purported benefits will be greatly outweighed by the harm being done. With a further aspect of this being a growing sentiment that to the extent that benefits will accrue from AI, that they are likely to largely benefit those who are already in positions of power and authority rather than truly benefiting the members of the “commonality.” Here there may also be a broader gesture towards “commonality” as referring to something that is core to humanity itself; as quite a few of the rejections of AI also seem to involve a sense that there is something about AI that runs afoul of what it means to be human.
This is not to say that most AI-opponents would choose to ground their opposition in reference to the Luddites; however, based on the sorts of critiques that are being leveled towards AI it would seem that quite a few AI-opponents would likely agree that “AI is hurtful to Commonality.”
There is a further aspect of this opposition which is worth reflecting on. A point which makes it clear how significant and deep this opposition is, and also contrasts it to previous moments when public sentiment turned against the tech-industry. For unlike the debatable “techlash” of a few years ago—in which the angry sentiment seemed to be more directed at the companies than at the actual “Machinery” (people were turning against Facebook, they were turning against the Internet itself)—the current wave of anti-AI sentiment seems to be directed at the actual machinery itself. True, certain companies get called out for particularly egregious things (with OpenAI’s ChatGPT being frequently singled out), but the anti-AI sentiment is not just directed at what this or that company is doing, it does not just name OpenAI or Grok or Anthropic as the problem, rather the opposition continues to be directed at AI itself. Or, to return to the earlier formulation, even though you’d probably find many AI-opponents who would agree that “Grok is hurtful to commonality” or “ChatGPT is hurtful to commonality” that which gets named over and over as the thing that is “hurtful to commonality” is AI itself.
Considering how much of the discussion around AI seems to be dominated by comments of “no more jobs” or “no more humans,” it is nearly impossible to think about AI without being at least somewhat oriented towards the future. And yet, AI-opposition also seems to be quite heavily grounded in making sense of this technology “in the present tense.” Rather than engage with the promises and threats for what AI might bring in the future, AI-opposition focuses in on what AI is doing in the moment and expresses alarm and distaste for it, and expresses the view that based on the ”present” of this technology that there is little reason to be optimistic for its future. True, there are groups opposing data centers being built in their communities, but this opposition to something that would be built in the future still winds up being grounded in a recognition of what those data centers are doing in the present. There is perhaps no single term that cuts more directly to a disparagement of AI in the present than the description of its output as “slop.”
Even as many an AI-opponent seems to be articulating the view that “AI is hurtful to commonality,” these groups and individuals also seem to be engaging with other important points of that formulation; namely “put down.” There is a fair amount of opposition to AI that takes the form of expressing discontent or making choices to avoid using it; however, just as the original Luddites once took their concerns to Parliament, AI-opponents also seem to be directing energy towards democratic channels. As was noted previously, “put down” as regards a certain type of technology can be interpreted in many ways, and it seems that (at least for the moment) many an AI-opponent is pushing for regulation and oversight in the hopes that these will be sufficient for controlling this “hurtful” machinery. And though it is too early to tell just how successful this will ultimately be (and what will therefore follow after it) there are at least some signs that pushback can prevent data centers from being built, and it seems that quite a few politicians are suspecting that this is an issue that matters to a significant portion of their constituents. Of course, there is always the danger that a performance of regulation will be pushed forth to attempt to diffuse public outcry, but based on the current heat surrounding this issue it seems quite possible that such a tepid effort will only inflame anti-AI sentiments.
Whether it is a view that AI’s threats to jobs is “hurtful to commonality,” that AI’s threats to education are “hurtful to commonality,” that AI’s threat to create a world of technological hermits makes it “hurtful to commonality,” or the view that AI’s violation of the human spirit/soul makes it “hurtful to commonality,” there is a clear case to be made that a spirit of Luddism is infusing much of the AI opposition.
AI-opponents do not need to embrace the title of Luddite if they do not want to. AI-opponents should not embrace the title of Luddite if they do not want to.
However, seeing as AI-opponents are going to be called Luddites either way, it’s not a bad thing to be able to respond to the accusation of “Luddite” by saying “you’re right, I oppose machinery hurtful to commonality. And AI? AI is machinery hurtful to commonality.”
Coda
Many of the responses to AI one is likely to encounter (in particular on social media) take the form of expletive laced phrases or comments like “you don’t hate AI enough” or “everyone get 100% more anti-AI right now.” However, mixed in with these you are likely to encounter some more nuanced attempts to grapple with what AI will mean for people’s sense of themselves and with people’s sense of what it means to be human. Such ruminating takes the form of focusing less on what AI means, and more on what being human means. And in these conversations, something that keeps popping up as a sort of response is pieces of a story from Kurt Vonnegut.
Though Vonnegut is known as the author of many a satiric story, in this particular one he isn’t talking about time travel or ice-9, but talking about going out to buy an envelope.
In this tale, Vonnegut recounts the minutia involved in going and purchasing a large manila envelope so he can mail off some pages. The story doesn’t feature much in the way of action, but it does feature a running commentary on all the people Vonnegut interacts with, and all the things that he sees along the way. Though many of Vonnegut’s works are a testament to the amusingly skewed way in which he saw the world, this story about buying an envelope focuses not on Vonnegut imagining what the world could be, but looking with affection at what actually is.
At the core of the story is a rejection of computerized convenience and efficiency—why not just buy a big box of envelopes?—in favor of the small joys of being a human in the world. With buying an envelope and mailing it off serving as an excuse to be a member of a community, and to do the work of participating in that community. The delightfully mundane story ends with Vonnegut returning home after buying the envelope and mailing it off at the post office with him noting that he has “had one hell of a good time,” after which he closes with his key observation:
“We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
And the title of the essay from which this envelope story comes?
It’s: “I Have Been Called a Luddite.”
Related Content
A Luddite Library
Why the Luddites Matter
Notes from a Weary Luddite
Luddism for Ludicrous Times
Specters of Ludd – A review of Breaking Things At Work
Who Are You Calling A Luddite? – A review of Blood in the Machine
General Ludd in the Long Seventies – A review of Dismantlings
Whose Afraid of General Ludd?
The Luddite Response
Theses on Technological Pessimism
Theses on Technological Optimism
They Meant Well (Or, why it matters who gets seen as a technology critic)
