1. The Limits of Technology:
Lessons From The Luddites?
Stephen Sellars
ssellars at gmail dot com

2. Overview
• A discussion around the limits of technology
• The allure vs. the fear of the new
• Analogies from the Industrial Revolution to
today
– the Luddites feared consequences of technology,
not technology itself
• How technology transforms/limits society

3. Sale: Rebels Against The Future
“Necessity, it was the genius of the Industrial
Revolution to understand, is not so much the
mother of invention as of demand, and hence
of consumption: establish needs, or merely
the felt perception of needs, and you establish
a market.” (Rebels p. 38)

4. Sale: Rebels Against The Future
Quoted from Charles Cobb, and economist with the
Society for a Human Economy:
“Neo-Luddites do not propose to overcome subtle
forms of enslavement to technology by physically
smashing machinery….In contrast to the original
Luddites, who focused on the particular effects of
particular machines, the Neo-Luddites are concerned
about the way in which dependence upon technology
changes the character of an entire society….They are
asking us to reflect on the entire configuration of
modern technology instead of isolated pieces of it.”
(Rebels p. 255)

5. Sale: Rebels Against The Future
“Wendell Berry, the Kentucky essayist, has
produced a list of criteria that would serve
well as a guide: a new tool, he says, should be
cheaper, smaller, and better than the one it
replaces, use less energy (and that energy
renewable), be repairable, come from a small,
local shop, and ‘should not replace or disrupt
anything good that already exists, and this
includes family and community relationships’.”
(Rebels p. 263)

6. Discussion Points
“All technologies have consequences, inevitable and
built in, and imperatives, just as inevitable,
essentially separate from human dictates and
desires.” (Rebels p. 28)
and
“A high-tech society is ever-changing and unsettled,
always caught in that rush of improvement and
innovation that generally goes by the name of
‘progress’, regardless of which direction it is
hurtling in.” (Rebels p.213)

7. Questions
• Too much of a good thing?
• How does technology get in the way of solving the
need?
• Is the cost justified?
• Can it be done without?
• How long will it last - throwaway society?
• Why does a tube amp sound better than a digital
one?
• What do you do at sea when your SATNAV/GPS dies?

8. Booch
• The software development paradox
– Not everything we want to build can be built
– Not everything we want to build should be built
– Building quality software that matters is
fundamentally hard work
– Software-intensive systems can amplify human
intelligence, but they cannot replace human judgment
– Software-intensive systems can fuse, coordinate,
classify, and analyze information, but they cannot
create knowledge

9. Examples
• Paper manufacturer: the lure of filling the
machines
• Philippine call center: can’t see the forest for
the application trees
• Chemical manufacturer: building VOIP on CAT
3 cable
• Canadian package hub: paradox of industrial
engineering

10. Sources
• Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their
War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the
Computer Age, by Kirkpatrick Sale
– http://books.google.com/books?id=kNnmrkJFQ5cC&d
q=rebels+against+the+future&printsec=frontcover&so
urce=web&ots=OjwLoOrTYN&sig=1prwlrPll1uh-
2KYvZBzC5l82gg
• Grady Booch: “What We Can And Cannot Do
With Software”
– http://www.sstc-
online.org/proceedings/2002/SpkrPDFs/Special/Booc
h.pdf