I test drove the first-generation Tesla Roadster. I once lived on Soylent powder shakes for a month. My Twitter account is almost old enough to drive. I wrote a book about the iPhone.
Also, I’m a Luddite. That’s not the contradiction that it might sound like. The original Luddites did not hate technology. Most were skilled machine operators. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, what they objected to were the specific ways that tech was being used to undermine their status, upend their communities and destroy their livelihoods. So they took sledgehammers to the mechanized looms used to exploit them.
Luddites weren’t stupid for the problems they noticed. They were stupid for not taking the fight directly to those in power. Fighting for a better status quo should never have to involve directly attacking a company. In fact, change can happen without targeting any specific company. Leave that to specific workers and unions.
The solution is to empower workers so it’s not the worker themselves who has to bust kneecaps just to get paid… Destroying specific companies does less than nothing. Attacking technology does nothing but set it back. Destroying machinery pays no one
It paints workers as unjustly entitled and uppity, just like when protests turn in to riots. Does a riot mean the protest stood for nothing? No! Does the riot make many people assume the protest stood for nothing? Yes. Pick your targets wisely. More wisely than Luddites of the past.