The Luddite Story
Luddites smashing weaving machines.
It’s a dark night in 1811. A good sized group of disgruntled textile workers break into their factory workplace with torches, axes, and other implements of destruction. Their target, the brand new Weaving Machines designed to do the work of many human weavers at a fraction of the cost. In earnest, they set about smashing and burning the machines to ashes as a protest. A violent expression of a common fear.
“Will this new machine steal my job?”
This same, insidious question seems unavoidable in recent years. When presented with the raw creative capabilities and intellectual power of LLMs and AI tools of the day, I tend to feel overwhelmed and devalued right off the bat.
Considering the sheer number of hours I have put into working concepts out with my own mental power - things that now define my persona - and how instantaneously some AI creates the same or similar (or better) output as I can… well… It’s more than a little disheartening.
However, we have plenty of historical precedent in the technology-killing-jobs concern category.
The term Luddite (from their mythical leader Ned Ludd) described those textile workers from 1811. The term became synonymous with anyone who vociferously opposes advances in technology in their life. I once called my wife a Luddite, and when she asked me what it meant, I told her to Google it.
I don’t recommend that, honestly.
The clothing industry has been a notable sufferer/beneficiary of technological advances for a long time. In the late 1500s, William Lee invented the first mechanical knitting frame and sought a patent from Queen Elizabeth I. She refused, reportedly out of concern for the livelihoods of hand knitters—a story that, while likely paraphrased, captures the real anxieties of the time. Despite her refusal, the technology eventually spread, and over time, the number of factory weavers grew dramatically, illustrating how new technology can transform rather than simply eliminate work.
A little closer to home, during the Great Depression, with unemployment around 20%, Americans feared that new machines and automation would destroy even more jobs. Economist John Maynard Keynes warned of “Technological unemployment,” and the debate raged about the true benefits of machines.
While some jobs did vanish, new industries and roles emerged. Not without some pain, but still.
Time and again, the end of one kind of work has marked the beginning of another. We live in one of these times, now, and it really comes down to each of us individually to decide how we want to react to these developments.
Today, as AI redraws the boundaries of what machines can do, we find ourselves echoing those same old fears—wondering what, if anything, will be left for us. And just as with the printing press, which threatened monks and scribes, perhaps the answer will be more surprising, and more hopeful, than we expect.
Do you share these fears? What are you doing to address them?
