> The Amish aren't really about rejecting technology just to be luddites, but rather to about trying to preserve their traditions and culture. One of the ways t

> The Amish aren't really about rejecting technology just to be luddites, but rather to about trying to preserve their traditions and culture. One of the ways they do that is to avoid adopting new things (technologies, processes, etc) until the community leadership agrees to it. Neither feels right to me. The Luddites and Amish share a common thread, which is that of ownership and control and ability to set one's own course. I don't think the Luddites agreed that preserving traditions and culture was what drove them. They wanted mechanization to serve us all, to not be used to control them. They resisted the mechanization of the human spirit. The Amish have their own culture & tradition, but I think again what's afoot here is also in part about control & ownership, at least as much as it is tradition & culture. To call this just tradition & culture ignores & skips over what's really at stake, which is control & ownership. Whether we have the ability to use technology on our own footing, or whether it is an injected force that shapes and molds us. Is tech soft and malleable, or is it hard & unyielding, forcing humanity to change itself?