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this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Quick update - Brian Merchant's list of "luddite horror" films ended up getting picked up by Fast Company:
To repeat a previous point of mine, it seems pretty safe to assume "luddite horror" is gonna become a bit of a trend. To make a specific (if unrelated) prediction, I imagine we're gonna see AI systems and/or their supporters become pretty popular villains in the future - the AI bubble's produces plenty of resentment towards AI specifically and tech more generally, and the public's gonna find plenty of catharsis in watching them go down.
Personally, I'd love to see the Luddites be rehabilitated as a result of the Great Bullshit Collapse. They were just regular folks fighting for dignity in work, and it's tragic how successful the bastards have been at erasing them from history.
Judging by some stray articles from WIRED and The Atlantic, Merchant's likely done plenty to rehabilitate the Luddites' image.
I suspect Silicon Valley's godawful reputation and widespread hatred of AI have likely helped as well - "machinery harmful to commonality" may be an unfamiliar concept to Joe Public, but "AI is ruining the Internet/taking your job/scamming your parents" is very fucking tangible to them.
Pulling out a previous post of mine, the NFT craze likely helped indirectly, by killing technological determinism's hold on the public and badly wounding Silicon Valley's public image.
Of those two, technological determinism's death was probably the more important one - that idea's demise meant the public was willing to entertain that new tech developments from Silicon Valley could be killed in their crib, that they wouldn't inevitably become a part of public life, for worse or (potentially) for better.
nfts damaged public image of crypto beyond recovery, fine. tech in general, i'm not so sure
I'd say they did do some damage to tech's wider image by becoming a pop-culture punchline and a mark of shame rolled into one.
Incidents like Seth Green's Ape getting kidnapped, the public exploitation of George Floyd's death and the legendary dumpster fire that was The Red Ape Family, plus the onslaught of dogshit NFT art and the nonstop scams and deception within the NFT/crypto sphere all led NFTs to become widely and rightfully panned, with NFTs getting unflatteringly compared to beanie babies and NFT profile pics getting either right-click saved to mock their supposed "ownership" or blocked on sight, depending on how people generally felt.
It is refreshing to see the general trend of people laughing when promptbros try to paint themselves as the Wright Brothers Reborn, isn't it?
my point is that these incidents were mostly mentally filed to "crypto" and were not generalized to wider tech industry