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The TV show Upload [1] has a group of people dubbed the "Ludds" (i.e. Luddites) that refuse to be party to the turn that the technological revolution has taken

The TV show Upload [1] has a group of people dubbed the "Ludds" (i.e. Luddites) that refuse to be party to the turn that the technological revolution has taken and stick to traditional ways of doing things. I strongly believe if that were to happen in our world today, much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds", while a mass of non-tech people would happily welcome our new technological overlords. [1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7826376/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7826376/

phkahler 5y ago
>> I strongly believe if that were to happen in our world today, much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds", while a mass of non-tech people would happily welcome our new technological overlords. Which would be very interesting because it's the Ludds who are building that tech. But hey, it pays well...
- core-utility 5y ago
  Indeed a plot twist.
paulcole 5y ago
> much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds" Bullshit. Much of Silicon Valley likes to think they would be Ludds but they do so while hailing an Uber from their iPhone and hoping that their DoorDash is devlivered on time so they can eat while they watch a HBO Max show and they hope that nobody stole their Amazon Prime package.
- core-utility 5y ago
  I think it applies more along the lines of "free" products where "you are the product" comes into play. It may entirely be biased based on who I know, but I know more tech people who refuse to have a Facebook because of tracking than I do non-tech people.
  - lukifer 5y ago
    In my experience, a disproportionate number of engineers also refuse to own Alexas.
  - paulcole 5y ago
avgcorrection 5y ago
The Silicon Valley clique is, after all, the only kinds of people who watched and enjoyed Black Mirror. So smart.
DrBoring 5y ago
In times of frustration with the modern Internet, I've often sympathized with the Amish. For those unfamiliar, the Amish are a religious-society that avoid the conveniences of modern technology. They live in houses without electricity, and travel by in horse and buggy. It's sort of like they hit a point in history and saw where the world was going and decided, "nah, we're ok, we like how things are now." When frustrated, I imagine a new-Amish. A secular society, who lives their lives (mostly) off the Internet. I'm not exactly sure what that would entail, nor do I think I'd actually want to live that way. It's just a fun thought experiment.
- prometheus76 5y ago
  I submit that the Amish have been successful in their efforts because they have a unifying transcendent value system that gives their group cohesion and purpose. Secular efforts will quickly dissolve into warring sub-tribes.
  - DrBoring 5y ago
    Thanks for response. I agree, their religion probably does a lot to hold the Amish society together. It sets out a common set of rules that everyone plays by. There is also the strict punishment of social shunning for not following the rules. I wonder how fa I disagree that a societal value system _must_ be religiously-transcendent to be effective. I can't name any such system that has had 100% success, but I reject the notion that it's impossible for a a functioning secular society to work. To be sure, my idea of a new-Amish whose only rule is minimal Internet usage, would not work as a tight-knit community. There would have to be a bigger connection than a common disdain for the Internet.
    - wott 5y ago
      Religion is the only reason and purpose which motivate their minimal use of technology. There are many different sorts of Amish, each with different rules (in the tradition of protestant sects which split on a regular basis), depending on which amount and type of technology they believe would interfere with their devotion. It is not some sort of hippy community which rejects the excess of modern technology and wraps some spirituality around it. It is the other way round.
raverbashing 5y ago
> much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds" No, quite the opposite They're the ones who buy "smart locks" then get locked out of their place because they dropped their iPhone in a puddle or the lights went out They're the ones who come with genius ideas like reinventing the bus with Uber or fall for stuff like uBeam because they're too lazy to plug their phone into a charger
- egberts1 5y ago
  That’s why Lockly.com has THREE methods of opening a smart lock. 1. key 2. iPhone 3. PIN pad.
  - core-utility 5y ago
    4. Hacker
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    It is a good solution, yes. But then they save the PIN on their phone instead of their memory because tiktok burned out their brain and they left the key home because "why do you need it since you have your iPhone!?11" and if this last point looks ridiculous remember this is exactly what happened with some Tesla owners going into areas of low cell service.
    - egberts1 5y ago
      PIN number of iPhone are stored within the Apple hardware security alcove and are not readable.
  - flyinghamster 5y ago
    4. Strategically placed magnet that either pops the relay controlling the lock or operates it directly. (You can tell I've been watching too many LockPickingLawyer videos.)
titzer 5y ago
> much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds" Much of Silicon Valley is just looking for a way to pay their exorbitant rent and/or become million(billion)aires. SV isn't going to take a principled stance on anything. Heck, the big players all know which side their bread is buttered on and the bigger they are, the more entwined in the corruption they are.
SCHiM 5y ago
I'm about as technical as it is possible to get. I fucking hate technology these days. It all sucks, it tries to insert itself between everything human and sane, and extract value for its masters. People are serfs in closed silos. They own nothing, just like the serfs of old: not their farmlands or cattle (laptops, phones and data), nor their homes (accounts in the 'cloud' subject to AI shutdown without human recourse). It will take a while of it getting progressively worse before an apathetic consumer class will finally be exploited enough to start demanding proper rules around all of this. I don't think progress will stop when the situation at it's worst. But I do think we'll have to get through that first.
- sharikous 5y ago
  > It will take a while of it getting progressively worse before an apathetic consumer class will finally be exploited enough to start demanding proper rules around all of this. We'll see about that, I guess. Revolutions in the past were successful because you couldn't control people so strongly and you needed the to work to be able to tax them. With our new surveillance tech and automation I am afraid this has changed for the worse
  - SCHiM 5y ago
    I think it will be better for four reasons: 1) Initially, when a new technology is discovered and leads to a paradigm shift, commercial/capitalist ventures are most efficient at digging down and innovating quickest. A depth first search if you will: relentlessly driving down costs, improving the technology and consuming or destroying the competition. Then, once the time is right, the exploitation begins. No longer are the newest models of $TECHNOLOGY strictly better than their predecessors, any progress is incremental and genuine innovation is partially co-opted by marketing. When this happens the screws start getting tightened. Companies used to rapid growth due to merit try to maintain growth velocity by cutting cost, exploiting regulatory loopholes yet to catch up with the paradigm shift, and any other things not directly related to their new niche that the risk/reward calculators deem worth it (breaking laws, anti-patterns, etc.). The reaction to this is two fold: 1a) governments want to stick their hand in the newly-added piece of the pie, 1b) people don't like being more and more exploited. 2) People understand when they're being screwed. Our sense of 'justness' is about as evolved as can get, people might not always be able to pinpoint what is screwing them over, but the anger still builds. I believe (really can't justify any of the things I'm claiming here as truth, it's just my opinions) that trust takes longer to build than to destroy. I loved google for 2 years, I've hated them for much longer. I feel intuitively that I'm being exploited when forced to help their machine learning algorithm detect traffic signs that only a few people will profit off. I feel like I've never entered into a fair contract where I'm obtaining search results in exchange for some of my attention; I'm just forced to fill these things out every once in a while to access a site unrelated to google. Can you believe my GP's site has a google captcha page on the contact form? Where I enter medical data? I _HATE_ that. 3) People like me (and you?) spread the word. After the initial rush described in point 1. other ways of working gain speed. Technology, organization, open source, education, they all make it easier and easier to replicate what was an enterprise deployment a decade ago as a small group, or even individual, today. One day a matrix bridge will allow me to message all my friends from a single, polished place, with good UX. One day later a friend will see me using it, and the word will spread. The inherent nature of information favors the communicators, integrator and middle men. It's impossible for a silo to detect with certainty that you are not actually using a third party app, like a matrix bridge, to talk to your friends. A false positive will lead to more feelings as shown in point 2, a false negative is the natural result of progress in point 3. 4) Governments cannot afford a completely tech illiterate population. Security and military forces around the world have recognized for years already that information technology is another avenue to achieve their goals. Knowledge of the possibilities of information technology is a natural (but certainly not perfect) antidote to some of the ways an opponent might exploit your population. Organizations (in a liberal country) in this sphere will focus on education, partially to increase their own resilience against attack, and create a fertile recruiting ground for new recruits. We gotta hold on till we get there.
nicholasnorris 5y ago
It's my understanding that the Luddite movement was less about personal preferences or adherence to tradition, and more a labor movement that was opposed to losing their livelihoods to early forms of automation.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Well, they did not lose their jobs to automation for the most part. But tech enable rigorous surveillance so that taking a leak has to be a timed. Yeah, technology...

phkahler 5y ago

>> I strongly believe if that were to happen in our world today, much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds", while a mass of non-tech people would happily welcome our new technological overlords. Which would be very interesting because it's the Ludds who are building that tech. But hey, it pays well...

core-utility 5y ago
Indeed a plot twist.

paulcole 5y ago

> much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds" Bullshit. Much of Silicon Valley likes to think they would be Ludds but they do so while hailing an Uber from their iPhone and hoping that their DoorDash is devlivered on time so they can eat while they watch a HBO Max show and they hope that nobody stole their Amazon Prime package.

core-utility 5y ago
I think it applies more along the lines of "free" products where "you are the product" comes into play. It may entirely be biased based on who I know, but I know more tech people who refuse to have a Facebook because of tracking than I do non-tech people.
- lukifer 5y ago
  In my experience, a disproportionate number of engineers also refuse to own Alexas.
- paulcole 5y ago

avgcorrection 5y ago

The Silicon Valley clique is, after all, the only kinds of people who watched and enjoyed Black Mirror. So smart.

DrBoring 5y ago

In times of frustration with the modern Internet, I've often sympathized with the Amish. For those unfamiliar, the Amish are a religious-society that avoid the conveniences of modern technology. They live in houses without electricity, and travel by in horse and buggy. It's sort of like they hit a point in history and saw where the world was going and decided, "nah, we're ok, we like how things are now." When frustrated, I imagine a new-Amish. A secular society, who lives their lives (mostly) off the Internet. I'm not exactly sure what that would entail, nor do I think I'd actually want to live that way. It's just a fun thought experiment.

prometheus76 5y ago
I submit that the Amish have been successful in their efforts because they have a unifying transcendent value system that gives their group cohesion and purpose. Secular efforts will quickly dissolve into warring sub-tribes.
- DrBoring 5y ago
  Thanks for response. I agree, their religion probably does a lot to hold the Amish society together. It sets out a common set of rules that everyone plays by. There is also the strict punishment of social shunning for not following the rules. I wonder how fa I disagree that a societal value system _must_ be religiously-transcendent to be effective. I can't name any such system that has had 100% success, but I reject the notion that it's impossible for a a functioning secular society to work. To be sure, my idea of a new-Amish whose only rule is minimal Internet usage, would not work as a tight-knit community. There would have to be a bigger connection than a common disdain for the Internet.
  - wott 5y ago
    Religion is the only reason and purpose which motivate their minimal use of technology. There are many different sorts of Amish, each with different rules (in the tradition of protestant sects which split on a regular basis), depending on which amount and type of technology they believe would interfere with their devotion. It is not some sort of hippy community which rejects the excess of modern technology and wraps some spirituality around it. It is the other way round.

raverbashing 5y ago

> much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds" No, quite the opposite They're the ones who buy "smart locks" then get locked out of their place because they dropped their iPhone in a puddle or the lights went out They're the ones who come with genius ideas like reinventing the bus with Uber or fall for stuff like uBeam because they're too lazy to plug their phone into a charger

egberts1 5y ago
That’s why Lockly.com has THREE methods of opening a smart lock. 1. key 2. iPhone 3. PIN pad.
- core-utility 5y ago
  4. Hacker
- raverbashing 5y ago
  It is a good solution, yes. But then they save the PIN on their phone instead of their memory because tiktok burned out their brain and they left the key home because "why do you need it since you have your iPhone!?11" and if this last point looks ridiculous remember this is exactly what happened with some Tesla owners going into areas of low cell service.
  - egberts1 5y ago
    PIN number of iPhone are stored within the Apple hardware security alcove and are not readable.
- flyinghamster 5y ago
  4. Strategically placed magnet that either pops the relay controlling the lock or operates it directly. (You can tell I've been watching too many LockPickingLawyer videos.)

titzer 5y ago

> much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds" Much of Silicon Valley is just looking for a way to pay their exorbitant rent and/or become million(billion)aires. SV isn't going to take a principled stance on anything. Heck, the big players all know which side their bread is buttered on and the bigger they are, the more entwined in the corruption they are.

SCHiM 5y ago

I'm about as technical as it is possible to get. I fucking hate technology these days. It all sucks, it tries to insert itself between everything human and sane, and extract value for its masters. People are serfs in closed silos. They own nothing, just like the serfs of old: not their farmlands or cattle (laptops, phones and data), nor their homes (accounts in the 'cloud' subject to AI shutdown without human recourse). It will take a while of it getting progressively worse before an apathetic consumer class will finally be exploited enough to start demanding proper rules around all of this. I don't think progress will stop when the situation at it's worst. But I do think we'll have to get through that first.

sharikous 5y ago
> It will take a while of it getting progressively worse before an apathetic consumer class will finally be exploited enough to start demanding proper rules around all of this. We'll see about that, I guess. Revolutions in the past were successful because you couldn't control people so strongly and you needed the to work to be able to tax them. With our new surveillance tech and automation I am afraid this has changed for the worse
- SCHiM 5y ago
  I think it will be better for four reasons: 1) Initially, when a new technology is discovered and leads to a paradigm shift, commercial/capitalist ventures are most efficient at digging down and innovating quickest. A depth first search if you will: relentlessly driving down costs, improving the technology and consuming or destroying the competition. Then, once the time is right, the exploitation begins. No longer are the newest models of $TECHNOLOGY strictly better than their predecessors, any progress is incremental and genuine innovation is partially co-opted by marketing. When this happens the screws start getting tightened. Companies used to rapid growth due to merit try to maintain growth velocity by cutting cost, exploiting regulatory loopholes yet to catch up with the paradigm shift, and any other things not directly related to their new niche that the risk/reward calculators deem worth it (breaking laws, anti-patterns, etc.). The reaction to this is two fold: 1a) governments want to stick their hand in the newly-added piece of the pie, 1b) people don't like being more and more exploited. 2) People understand when they're being screwed. Our sense of 'justness' is about as evolved as can get, people might not always be able to pinpoint what is screwing them over, but the anger still builds. I believe (really can't justify any of the things I'm claiming here as truth, it's just my opinions) that trust takes longer to build than to destroy. I loved google for 2 years, I've hated them for much longer. I feel intuitively that I'm being exploited when forced to help their machine learning algorithm detect traffic signs that only a few people will profit off. I feel like I've never entered into a fair contract where I'm obtaining search results in exchange for some of my attention; I'm just forced to fill these things out every once in a while to access a site unrelated to google. Can you believe my GP's site has a google captcha page on the contact form? Where I enter medical data? I _HATE_ that. 3) People like me (and you?) spread the word. After the initial rush described in point 1. other ways of working gain speed. Technology, organization, open source, education, they all make it easier and easier to replicate what was an enterprise deployment a decade ago as a small group, or even individual, today. One day a matrix bridge will allow me to message all my friends from a single, polished place, with good UX. One day later a friend will see me using it, and the word will spread. The inherent nature of information favors the communicators, integrator and middle men. It's impossible for a silo to detect with certainty that you are not actually using a third party app, like a matrix bridge, to talk to your friends. A false positive will lead to more feelings as shown in point 2, a false negative is the natural result of progress in point 3. 4) Governments cannot afford a completely tech illiterate population. Security and military forces around the world have recognized for years already that information technology is another avenue to achieve their goals. Knowledge of the possibilities of information technology is a natural (but certainly not perfect) antidote to some of the ways an opponent might exploit your population. Organizations (in a liberal country) in this sphere will focus on education, partially to increase their own resilience against attack, and create a fertile recruiting ground for new recruits. We gotta hold on till we get there.

nicholasnorris 5y ago

It's my understanding that the Luddite movement was less about personal preferences or adherence to tradition, and more a labor movement that was opposed to losing their livelihoods to early forms of automation.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Well, they did not lose their jobs to automation for the most part. But tech enable rigorous surveillance so that taking a leak has to be a timed. Yeah, technology...