Will 2018 be the year of the neo-luddite?
The downsides of technology’s inexorable march are now becoming clear – and automation will only increase the anxiety. We should expect the growing interest in off-grid lifestyles to be accompanied by direct action and even anti-tech riots
The ReGen eco-village; taxi drivers protest against Uber in Paris. Composite: Rex/Shutterstock; PR
O ne of the great paradoxes of digital life – understood and exploited by the tech giants – is that we never do what we say. Poll after poll in the past few years has found that people are worried about online privacy and do not trust big tech firms with their data. But they carry on clicking and sharing and posting, preferring speed and convenience above all else. Last year was Silicon Valley’s annus horribilis: a year of bots, Russian meddling, sexism, monopolistic practice and tax-minimising. But I think 2018 might be worse still: the year of the neo-luddite, when anti-tech words turn into deeds.
The caricature of machine-wrecking mobs doesn’t capture our new approach to tech. A better phrase is what the writer Blake Snow has called “reformed luddism” : a society that views tech with a sceptical eye, noting the benefits while recognising that it causes problems, too. And more importantly, thinks that something can be done about it.
One expression of reformed luddism is already causing a headache for the tech titans. Facebook and Google are essentially huge advertising firms. Ad-blocking software is their kryptonite. Yet millions of people downloaded these plug-ins to stop ads chasing them across the web last year, and their use has been growing (on desktops at least) close to 20% each year, indiscriminately hitting smaller publishers, too.
More significantly, the whole of society seems to have woken up to the fact there is a psychological cost to constant checking, swiping and staring. A growing number of my friends now have “no phone” times, don’t instantly sign into the cafe wifi, or have weekends away without their computers. This behaviour is no longer confined to intellectuals and academics, part of some clever critique of modernity. Every single parent I know frets about “screen time”, and most are engaged in a struggle with a toddler over how much iPad is allowed. The alternative is “slow living” or “slow tech”. “Want to become a slow-tech family?” writes Janell Burley Hoffmann , one of its proponents. “Wait! Just wait – in line, at the doctor’s, for the bus, at the school pickup – just sit and wait.” Turning what used to be ordinary behaviour into a “movement” is a very modern way to go about it. But it’s probably necessary.
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Even insiders are starting to wonder what monsters they’ve unleashed. Former Google “design ethicist” Tristan Harris recently founded the nonprofit organisation Time Well Spent in order to push back against what he calls a “digital attention crisis” of our hijacked minds. Most of the tech conferences I’m invited to these days include this sort of introspection: is it all going too far? Are we really the good guys?
That tech firms are responding is proof they see this is a serious threat: many more are building in extra parental controls, and Facebook admitted last year that too much time on their site was bad for your health, and promised to do something . Apple investors recently wrote to the company, suggesting the company do more to “ensure that young consumers are using your products in an optimal manner” – a bleak word combination to describe phone-addled children , but still.
It’s worth reflecting what a radical change all this is. That economic growth isn’t everything, that tech means harm as well as good – this is not the escape velocity, you-can’t-stop-progress thinking that has colonised our minds in the past decade. Serious writers now say things that would have been unthinkable until last year: even the FT calls for more regulation and the Economist asks if social media is bad for democracy.
This reformed luddism does not however mean the end of good, old-fashioned machine-smashing. The original luddites did not dislike machines per se, rather what they were doing to their livelihoods and way of life. It’s hard not to see the anti-Uber protests in a similar light. Over the past couple of years, there have been something approaching anti-Uber riots in Paris ; in Hyderabad, India, drivers took to the streets to vent their rage against unmet promises of lucrative salaries; angry taxi drivers blocked roads last year across Croatia, Hungary and Poland. In Colombia, there were clashes with police, while two Uber vehicles were torched in Johannesburg and 30 metered taxi drivers arrested.
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This will not end well.
At the very moment when we most need to be led by knowledgeable experts... we have luddites.
Oh C'mon man; we have Rump and he knows everything!
Oh.
I am s-o-o-o-o reassured...
But, but he's a really smart guy....
and really, really stable.......
I knew you would bring up Trump sooner rather than later. But really...be thankful that Hillary and her team of morons never got elected...she was so stupid that she thought that the way to wipe a hard drive clean was with a cloth, or by pouring bleach on it. And dopey Podesta let himself get phished into giving up the vitals for his account.
Who is Hillary? Some anecdotal character from ancient history? Why is she pertinent, here?
Or is this just miserable redirection?
The planet of the luddies...Return of the luddies..Luddies revenge.
AI will be the harbinger of dystopia. Nothing can be done about it either, as long as it is seen only as "progress".
A distinct possibility.
But many are quite aware of the problems that can ensue once we create a general intelligence capable of learning at least as effectively as a human being. Once we hit that -by today's standards extremely impressive- milestone we are in a new era. If our ability to control this invention is not sufficient then it will absolutely get out of our control. Once we lose control, the upward potential of this AI's IQ will be scary. An uncontrolled super intellect harnessing the power of networked computing resources would be a nightmare for humanity.
So there is most definitely rational concern for our AI advancements. Given how we are on the edge of destruction with other man-made agents such as nuclear bombs, chemical warfare, etc. it is quite difficult to be encouraged that we will have the necessary control over AI (and it must be perpetual control).