Talk:Neo-Luddism

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For a June 2005 deletion debate over this page see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Neo-luddism

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[edit] Too few people use the term "Cyborg Luddite" for it to be here

This is a truly obscure strain of thought. Some people who advocate becoming cyborgs may do so partially out of a fear of becoming obsolete when completely artificial intelligences exist, but this is hardly a separate movement. Also, this cannot be characterized as luddism or neo-luddism, as these belief systems are specifically against technology interfering with human lives.

The term is not used much at all... google "cyborg luddite" in quotes... most references point to a single person, Steve Mann.

If no one can respond to this with some justification for its inclusion in the next week, I will edit it out of this article.

SpaceTycoon 17:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed with the above -- especially, even if it were a well-known movement, it would not be a Luddite movement whatever it chooses to call itself, since it fundamentally embraces technology --Quaestor23 15:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Neither a left nor right wing fantasy!

There are people who have a fundamental critique of technology, often with anti-authoritarian and insurrectionary overtones and intentions, and express it through both words and actions, just like the original Luddites of the 19th century. This is not a "fantasy" of the right or left wing! It is simply true; five minutes with the links I've provided establish this. Thus the inclusion of references to John Zerzan, Derrick Jensen, the ELF, and so on are appropriate and relevant.

[edit] New Edit

You are obvioulsy a left wing proponent. Since this is most likely true, how are we supposed to know that this paper is not left wing propaganda after you "fixed" it? I reworked most of the article. Let me know what you think. One note: I deleted the "affiliations" since none of them had "Luddite" referenced on any of their pages, plus they were pretty much all of one political persuasion. To me they were only so much advertisement with no applicability. If you have a problem with this or anything else, please discuss here. Amicuspublilius 19:24, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I "fixed" this entry, removing a bunch of propaganda from right wing sources. Frankly, this article shouldn't even exist, because there is simply no self-identified "neo-luddite" movement. This entry is an attempt by right wingers to establish that such a mythical movement exists. The stuff about Teresa Heniz Kerry funding this so-called movement is the dead giveaway that this entry has no factual basis.

How do people go about removing article from Wikipedia that have no factual basis? This "neo-luddite" movement is a right wing fantasy.

Chuck Munson. (Infoshop.org).

These "left" and "right wing" designations are corporate fantasies designed to control you. In actual fact, outside of the machine language of computers, reality doesn't reduce to many either-or dilemmas. There is certainly such a phenomenon as neo-Luddism, and it isn't just purported left wing types who engage in it, not by a long shot. The so-called "right wing" is very much anti-technology (eg stem cell research, cloning, and many aspects of transhumanism); Republican Christian groups, usually pigeonholed as "right wing", have been some of the most vehement espousers of new Luddism, much of it connected to 'mark of the Beast' prophecies in the Revelations of St. John; it's really only the specific concretes where differences lie between the two supposed polar opposites, but the abstract principle is actually the same: Government should have the right to restrict or ban technology, based on a phantom "what if" nightmare scenario. If you're "left wing", the nightmare is GM crops and global warming, if you're "right wing" it's human chimeras and RFID tracking. Claiming this primitive, fear-based, anti-technology emotionalism is in any way connected to political orientation, especially the ridiculous "left/right" paradigm (which means virtually nothing in terms of policymaking) is absurd.
On the contrary, the very fact that the opposing ends of the spectrum focus on separate anti-technology issues demonstrates that there are two separate movements with similar goals.Mlorrey 16:40, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Or it might demonstrate that the spectrum you have been led to believe exists is actually nothing more than a false meme. Let Occam's razor decide.
Here is Wikipedia's deletion policy. The term "neo-luddite" is in common usage, and I doubt you will find much community consensus for deletion. While few would identify themselves as "neo-luddites", there certainly is a diverse movement advocating everything from a critical analysis of modern technologies to the elimination of such technologies. ElBenevolente 22:48, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)


I concur that this article is still POV-heavy; the list of "prominent neo-luddites" is particularly suspicious for the reasons cited by Munson above. Specifically, I removed Gretel Ehlrich from the list after reviewing a number of interviews (i.e. Library Journal 129:18 [84] 15 Nov 2004) with Ehlrich as well as biographical overviews of her life and writings (see Contemporary Authors and Dictionary of Literary Biography) which showed no evidence of the positions, beliefs or activities described by the article. Lukethelibrarian 21:36, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

I concur that Gretel Ehrlich doesn't belong there, someone modified the earlier reference to Paul R Ehrlich, who is a noted neo-malthusian/neo-luddite. I have done extensive research on the movement and am working on this article. I do not have time to complete it at once. However, Munson is a member of one group involved in the network, so his opinions here amount to non-NPOV revisionism and disinformation. Mlorrey 20:00, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with disparaging comments made above about the article. I don't understand why they don't correct the article. I think there is enough room in Wikipedia for ideas and this is one of them.--Mea 06:41, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Mea. Also, I have seen the term "neo-luddite" used by a person to describe their beliefs regarding technology more than once. Repku 05:52, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] On Fukuyama

"Fukuyama is famously wrong for predicting the end of history with the fall of the U.S.S.R". Yet the The End of History says "Fukuyama's thesis is often misinterpreted and misunderstood. For example, it is frequently claimed that Fukuyama believes that history ended in 1989 (with the fall of the Berlin Wall)."

Fukuyama says, "What we may be witnessing in not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." (quoted from "The End of History?", 1989) What is clear to most is that liberal democracy is not the end-state of human ideological evolution, despite its continuing attempts to retain the idea of the social-welfare semi-free market nation-state through hook, crook, or force of arms. Fukuyama is famously wrong because the promise of transhuman advancement and the future technological singularity indicate a future stage of punctuated equilibrium in human affairs, the results of which are impossible to predict. See Ray Kurzweil's books for further elucidation on these ideas. It is for this reason that Fukuyama now calls transhumanism, "the world's most dangerous idea", if only because it will further demonstrate how wrong he was. Transhumanism is dangerous to his future royalty stream... Mlorrey 16:43, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Specific POV concerns

It seems to me that this topic is covered more thoroughly and with better NPOV in Primitivism. Could this topic be redirected there?

Neo-primitivism advocates a return to a hunter-gatherer or pre-historical agricultural level of existence (without admitting that 90%+ of the human race would need to die for such an inefficient lifestyle to be sustainable). Neo-Luddites generally are stasists, in that they don't want technology to advance beyond a mid-20th century Rockwellian vision of America, or they want to turn things back to a form of neo-feudalism along socialist lines, or somewhere in between, such as a 19th century frontier American lifestyle. It generally depends on the individual and the group one is speaking of. Mlorrey

My specific reasons for adding the NPOV dispute tag are the following.

NOTE: I added the dispute notice to this talk page first. I am more concerned about vandals interfering in the documentation process.Mlorrey 05:50, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Understood. However, I am concerned about the end-users of the article, which in its current state contains far too many unsupported allegations. Lukethelibrarian 12:53, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The article fails to provide evidence to support/document:

    • relevance of Bush policy to article, relationship between "neo-luddite movement" and Bush actions
As Bush policy was written by Kass and Fukuyama, self-declared 'bio-luddites', the relevance is clear.Mlorrey 05:34, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It would be if you would better establish the relationship between Kass, Fukuyama and the rest of the "network" or "movement" that you are alleging. So far, that's not present in the article. Lukethelibrarian 12:53, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
There never was any allegation that Kass or Fukuyama were associated with the network movement, which is the left wing movement. The right wing movement is separate, as stated. There were numerous articles after the Seattle riots of how right wing and left wing groups started networking over common issues.Mlorrey 8 July 2005 22:08 (UTC)


[edit] Anti-singularity/gray-goo motivations

I've run across neo-luddite sympathies motivated by fear of a singularity or gray-goo type event. This is mostly just the logical extreme of the standard anti-techonology arguments, but it might be worth a mention, as some people are opposed not to specific technological improvements but utimately a sudden and pronounced loss of our control over them.

[edit] Green Party ref in "Reasoning"

I've changed "members of the Green Party" to "those" in the following paragraph:

Accusations of "neo-luddism" on the left are usually directed at members of the Green Party who oppose technology on the grounds that may contribute to any or all of the following: environmental degradation, consumerism, sexism, cruelty to animals, social decay, the collapse of tribal ways of life, or the separation of the worker from the means of production.

For one thing, it's inaccurate to talk about the Green Party as if only one such thing exists. Many countries and regions have a political party by this name, as the Worldwide green parties article that Green Party redirects to makes clear. Aside from this, I don't think there's any practical way to determine what proportion of "accusations of "neo-luddism" on the left" being made worldwide are directed at members of some Green Party or another. If someone were to claim more narrowly that "x percent of print media references to "neo-luddism" in country xyz were directed at members of the xyz Green Party", I'd be more likely to believe that the claim was based on some sort of research, and not just pulled out of thin air. --Eloil 03:46, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I thought the article was enlightening.

It seems to me that when you enter the realm of philosophy, it gets more difficult to present a neutral point of view. Do the article's critics want a better article, or do they want to suppress it? I admit I feel much in common with the ideas of neo-luddism, and I was very interested to find out a)it exists, and b)the information presented about it. Since I and probably other people believe it exists, why can't these critics correct the non-neutral parts?

[edit] w00t, is it just me or...

Is it just me or why would stuff like dehumanise and alienate people; destroy traditional cultures, societies, and family structure; pollute languages; reduce the need for person-to-person contact [and] alter the very definition of what it means to be human be bad things? It implies that old ideas are better than new ones, just because they are old. Crakkpot (talk) 14:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RIAA/IFPI as Neo-Luddists

Considering their generally very strong opposition to follow the technological development in the information society, would it be ok to add them among with the anti-GMO and anti-Stem cell research groups? --NiklasBr (talk) 10:28, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Dictionary Version

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Lud·dite (lŭd'īt) Pronunciation Key n.

  1. Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed
     laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment.
  2. One who opposes technical or technological change.

neo means new or recent so the non politicized definition of neo luddite is basically present day people who oppose technical or technological change and/or riot and destroy that which would diminish employment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.59.162.250 (talk) 02:33, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

No.12.168.6.143 (talk) 22:08, 23 May 2008 (UTC)