Ned Ludd, the inspiration and namesake behind the Luddite movement, was probably not a real person. He became a figure of 19th century folklore after his apocryphal origin story was passed around by word of mouth: that a weaver from Anstey, near Leicester in England, had flown into a fit of rage, possibly after being whipped by an overseer, and smashed two mechanical knitting frames.
The story was first recorded in The Nottingham Review in 1811. By 1812, weavers had become organised in their rage against the machines. The frame-breakers became known as Luddites. If Ned Ludd were alive (and non-fictional) today, he would be a leader of the bot-bashing movement – the phenomenon of food-delivery robots being hunted down on the streets of American cities where they are in use.
Video evidence of these assaults is plentiful online. As reported by The New York Times: “Americans have kicked, tipped and walloped the food robots – the most tangible incarnation of AI to reach their front steps.”
All that anxiety about the impending redundancy of human capacity has to be vented somewhere. So it’s turning up, at least in part, as a boot in the digitised face of R2-D2’s successors.
Now, young Americans are adopting Ned Ludd’s name and tradition for themselves.
In New York in June, a group led by comedian Dan Foxx organised a festival called the Summer of Ludd, which was a collection of IRL events “designed to yank individuals off their phones and into the real world”, according to The Washington Post.
The Post reported that the festival “builds off a burgeoning Luddite renaissance in New York” which comprises phone-free meet-ups, the creation of new “dumb” or “light” phone companies, and a growing number of digital-native-generation folk who are renegotiating their relationship with technology.
Foxx, who hosts monthly no-phone gatherings in his Brooklyn brownstone, was interviewed by 60 Minutes Australia for a segment on “digital dementia”.
“When I was on the smartphone and social media a lot, I feel like my memory was worse, and I was grasping for words and vocabulary,” he said. “I couldn’t quite remember anecdotes … it was starting to concern me.”
I know what he means. A couple of months ago, I deleted all social media from my phone. Reading the Post article, I was gratified to learn I had inadvertently done something trendy, although the fact that I only knew it was trendy because I read about it in the legacy media detracted somewhat from my coolness.
I executed this radical feat partly because there are so few acts of rebellion available to middle class, law-abiding working mothers. I would never hurt a robot, but I can refuse to kneel to the social media companies who would have me endlessly scroll, which is by far the most addictive and deleterious part of the smartphone experience.
I wanted to reclaim my time, but mostly I was tired of the maximalism of social media. There was just too much content for any one person to process, and with the proliferation came an impulse to get across all of it.
That impulse can easily become a compulsion, which is why people speak, convincingly, of becoming addicted to their phones, or addicted to social media (and also why people who “give up” are so unbearably smug).
There is a term for this digital maximalism – it’s called infobesity, the phenomenon whereby this proliferation of low-value information makes us culturally obese and intellectually malnourished.
I believe it’s partly responsible for the confusion and anger we see in our politics. The more low-quality information people have spewed at them, the more bewildered they become, and the less empowered they feel.
Going on a digital diet is especially important if you’re trying to write books. Creativity needs long stretches of time to wander and loll about, to get side-tracked and move languorously. It’s impossible to cultivate these conditions when you’re putting your brain into the pinball machine of social media.
Much has been written about the decline of reading (books, that is). Financial Times columnist and chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch argued in a recent piece that over the past 20 years, there have been two notable declines in high-income countries – the decline in deep social connection, and the decline in reading.
He examined the argument that these declines are in part due to financial pressure – that books are too expensive and that eating out, or going to the pub, has become unattainable for some. But he noted that there has been no commensurate increase in people socialising at home, which is low-cost. In fact, there has been a larger decline in that kind of socialising. Burn-Murdoch refers to it as the “death of hosting”.
He also concludes that screens have edged out books not because they’re cheaper, but because digital technology wins out “through the sheer force of unparalleled convenience and attention capture”.
Which brings us to the other issue of influence. It’s increasingly difficult even for media-savvy and digitally literate people to distinguish between real and fake content. We are all being fooled when we go on social media. But even more pernicious is the certainty that if you engage with certain types of content, you will get more content that reinforces that view and doubles down on whatever you’re being served.
There is so much power in saturation that it is irresistible even to people who would believe themselves self-aware. The best way for me to reclaim that independence, at least for now, was to switch off.
I do miss the cavoodle videos, though. A cavoodle never influenced anyone to do evil.
Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and a regular columnist.
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