Brian Merchant, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2023), 496 pages, $30, hardcover.
As the subtitle, The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech, indicates, Merchant seeks to draw parallels between Luddism, which arose in response to the dislocations of England's Industrial Revolution, and the burgeoning resistance to Silicon Valley digital capitalism. The algorithm-orchestrated gig economy, cloud computing, and the artificial intelligence climacteric have inaugurated a second machine age that threatens a degradation of work at least as acute and pervasive as the one that inspired the Luddites to take up their oversized hammers. In the months since Blood in the Machine's publication, the tech backlash has only gathered momentum as concern with the major AI companies' cavalier attitude toward safety and intellectual property—and public apprehension of an impending employment apocalypse—fuels anti-tech sentiment. Consequently, the book is even more topical now than when it initially appeared. Given Merchant's exquisite timeliness and exceptional moral clarity,....
Merchant tells the story of Luddism with fidelity and panache. The Luddites were a loosely affiliated network of textile workers in the English north and Midlands, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, in the 1810s. Frame knitters, stockingers, and other craftspeople watched incredulously as manufacturers introduced machinery that enabled their own labor to be performed by unskilled workers—frequently children—at a fraction of the cost. Even more alarming, these devices were installed in a new architectural edifice, the factory, the inmates of which were subject to unprecedented labor intensity and discipline. Accompanying the Industrial Revolution, Merchant underscores, was an equally important cultural revolution: proudly independent artisans, many of whom had carried on their trade alongside their families at home, now had to report to what William Blake unforgettably called the "dark satanic mills," where operatives were subordinated to the remorseless rhythm of automated production and the petty tyranny of overseers. Skilled craftworkers faced a Solomonic decision: starvation or proletarianization.
Refusing this baleful choice, many opted for resistance instead. Nevertheless, the Luddites were not crazed technophobes—indeed, many were themselves amateur inventors or mechanical enthusiasts. They did not turn to pulverizing machines (a bargaining tactic that had been utilized opportunistically for centuries) until they had exhausted all other avenues for redress. As Merchant documents, immiserated craftworkers pressed for the enforcement of regulations governing their trades that were already on the books, petitioned parliament to enact basic labor protection laws, and proposed alternatives that would enable manufacturers to make a profit without reducing their employees to penury. For these efforts, they were ignored and mocked by turns. Ironically, the machine wrecking for which Luddism became notorious was "the bargaining tool of last resort."2 Given the intransigence of the governing and employing classes, Merchant insists, the Luddites' recourse to this tactic "was, if anything, a logical response."3
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