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Shashi Tharoor’s word of the week: Luddite
A world without technology? That is what many people still dream of
Luddite (noun): One who strongly opposes (or at least avoids) the use of new technology.
Usage: My aunt is a Luddite; she still refuses to have a mobile phone and insists on retaining her old rotary-dial telephone from the 1960s.
The term comes from the Luddites, a group of angry and radical textile workers in England who, during a region-wide rebellion from 1811-1816, destroyed machinery that was causing them to lose their jobs. It is said they were inspired (but apparently not led) by Ned Ludd of Nottingham, who had acquired some notoriety by destroying, in a fit of rage (or insanity, depending on who was telling the story) a knitting frame in 1779. Luddites argued that the new machines were anti-humanity, since they would displace people, while the many years workers spent learning the skills of their craft would be wasted once automated textile equipment took over their roles. The Luddite insurrection did not go unpunished; factory and mill-owners started shooting protesters, armed soldiers were called in and in response to their spree of destruction, the British parliament passed the Frame-Breaking Act which made the destruction of knitting frames punishable by death.
The Luddite movement may have died out soon enough, but the name clung to those who opposed many forms of modern technology over the following two centuries. In India, the Communist cadres who smashed computers when they were first introduced into LIC offices and public sector banks in the 1980s did so for exactly the same reasons as their forebears in Nottingham in 1811 – they feared the new machines would replace them in their jobs and make their mathematical and computational skills irrelevant. They were Indian Luddites. Today the word is also used more irreverently to refer to anyone resistant to technology; housewives who won’t trust microwave ovens, parents who don’t Whats App, middle-aged resisters of smartphones, and the like can all be described as Luddites.
But there are still some serious Luddites around, who don’t agree with the way modern technology is transforming our lives. In April 1996 the Second Luddite Congress met in Barnesville, Ohio, and issued a manifesto proclaiming the birth of Neo-Luddism as “a leaderless movement of passive resistance to consumerism and the increasingly bizarre and frightening technologies of the Computer Age.” As with all leaderless movements, however, the NeoLuddites seem to have faded away without a whimper; Google, another technology they no doubt oppose, records no mention of a Third Luddite Congress.
