Neo-Luddism or new Luddism is a philosophy opposing many forms of modern technology. The term Luddite is generally used as a pejorative applied to people showing technophobic leanings. The name is based on the historical legacy of the English Luddites, who were active between 1811 and 1817. Neo-Luddites are characterized by one or more of the following practices: passively abandoning the use of technology, protesting technology harmful to the environment, advocating simple living, or sabotaging technology. The modern neo-Luddite movement has connections with the anti-globalization movement, anarcho-primitivism, radical environmentalism, and deep ecology. Neo-Luddism stipulates the use of the precautionary principle for all new technologies, insisting that technologies be proven safe before adoption, due to the unknown effects that new technologies might inspire.
Philosophy
In 1990, attempting to found a unified movement and reclaim the term Luddite, Chellis Glendinning published her "Notes towards a Neo-Luddite manifesto". In this paper, Glendinning describes neo-Luddites as "20th century citizens—activists, workers, neighbors, social critics, and scholars—who question the predominant modern worldview, which preaches that unbridled technology represents progress". Glendinning voices an opposition to technologies that she deems destructive to communities or are materialistic and rationalistic. She proposes that technology encourages biases, and therefore should question if technologies have been created for specific interests, to perpetuate their specific values including short-term efficiency, ease of production and marketing, as well as profit. Glendinning also says that secondary aspects of technology, including social, economic and ecological implications, and not personal benefit need to be considered before adoption of technology into the technological system. In the place of industrial capitalism, neo-Luddism prescribes small-scale agricultural communities such as those of the Amish and the Chipko movement in Nepal and India as models for the future.
Neo-Luddism denies the ability of any new technology to solve current problems, such as environmental degradation,
Vision of the future without intervention
Neo-Luddism often establishes stark predictions about the effect of new technologies.
Although there is not a cohesive vision of the ramifications of technology, neo-Luddism predicts that a future without technological reform has dire consequences. Neo-Luddites believe that current technologies are a threat to humanity and to the natural world in general, and that a future societal collapse is possible or even probable.
These predictions include changes in humanity's place in the future due to replacement of humans by computers, genetic decay of humans due to lack of natural selection, biological engineering of humans, misuse of technological power including disasters caused by genetically modified organisms, nuclear warfare, and biological weapons; control of humanity using surveillance, propaganda, pharmacological control, and psychological control; humanity failing to adapt to the future manifesting as an increase in psychological disorders, widening economic and political inequality, widespread social alienation, a loss of community, and massive unemployment; technology causing environmental degradation due to shortsightedness, overpopulation, and overcrowding. Some Luddites see themselves as victims of technology trying to prevent further victimization (such as Citizens Against Pesticide Misuse and Parents Against Underage Smartphones). Others see themselves as advocates for the natural order and resist environmental degradation by technology (such as Earth First!).
Relationship to violence and vandalism
Some neo-Luddites use vandalism or violence to achieve social change and promote their cause.
In May 2012, credit for the shooting of Roberto Adinolfi, an Ansaldo Nucleare executive, was claimed by an anarchist group who targeted him for stating that none of the deaths following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami were caused by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster itself: <blockquote>Adinolfi knows well that it is only a matter of time before a European Fukushima kills on our continent [...] Science in centuries past promised us a golden age, but it is pushing us towards self destruction and slavery [...] With our action we give back to you a small part of the suffering that you scientists are bringing to the world.</blockquote>
The American terrorist Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, initially sabotaged developments near his cabin but dedicated himself to getting back at the system after discovering a road had been built over a plateau he had considered beautiful. Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski engaged in a nationwide bombing campaign against modern technology, planting or mailing numerous home-made bombs, killing three people and injuring 23 others. In his 1995 work Industrial Society and Its Future, The manifesto of the "Second Luddite Congress", which Sale took a major part in defining, attempts to redefine neo-Luddites as people who reject violent action. However, the later Heidegger did not see technology as wholly negative and did not call for its abandonment or destruction. In The Question Concerning Technology (1953), Heidegger posited that the modern technological "mode of Being" was one which viewed the natural world, plants, animals, and even human beings as a "standing-reserve"—resources to be exploited as means to an end. In Industrial Revolution England, machines became cheaper to use than men. The five counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire had a small uprising where they threatened those hired to guard the machines. Another critic of political and technological expansion was Lewis Mumford, who wrote The Myth of the Machine. The views of Ellul influenced the ideas of the infamous American neo-Luddite terrorist Ted Kaczynski. The opening of Kaczynski's manifesto reads: "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race." Other philosophers of technology who have questioned the validity of technological progress include Albert Borgmann, Don Ihde and Hubert Dreyfus.