Brian Merchant, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2023), 496 pages, $30, hardcover.
As the subtitle, The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech,
indicates, Merchant seeks to draw parallels between Luddism, which arose
in response to the dislocations of England’s Industrial Revolution, and
the burgeoning resistance to Silicon Valley digital capitalism. The
algorithm-orchestrated gig economy, cloud computing, and the artificial
intelligence climacteric have inaugurated a second machine age that
threatens a degradation of work at least as acute and pervasive as the
one that inspired the Luddites to take up their oversized hammers. In
the months since Blood in the Machine‘s publication, the tech
backlash has only gathered momentum as concern with the major AI
companies’ cavalier attitude toward safety and intellectual property—and
public apprehension of an impending employment apocalypse—fuels
anti-tech sentiment. Consequently, the book is even more topical now
than when it initially appeared. Given Merchant’s exquisite timeliness
and exceptional moral clarity,....
Merchant tells the story of Luddism with fidelity and panache. The
Luddites were a loosely affiliated network of textile workers in the
English north and Midlands, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, in
the 1810s. Frame knitters, stockingers, and other craftspeople watched
incredulously as manufacturers introduced machinery that enabled their
own labor to be performed by unskilled workers—frequently children—at a
fraction of the cost. Even more alarming, these devices were installed
in a new architectural edifice, the factory, the inmates of which were
subject to unprecedented labor intensity and discipline. Accompanying
the Industrial Revolution, Merchant underscores, was an equally
important cultural revolution: proudly independent artisans, many of
whom had carried on their trade alongside their families at home, now
had to report to what William Blake unforgettably called the “dark
satanic mills,” where operatives were subordinated to the remorseless
rhythm of automated production and the petty tyranny of overseers.
Skilled craftworkers faced a Solomonic decision: starvation or
proletarianization.
Refusing this baleful choice, many opted for resistance instead.
Nevertheless, the Luddites were not crazed technophobes—indeed, many
were themselves amateur inventors or mechanical enthusiasts. They did
not turn to pulverizing machines (a bargaining tactic that had been
utilized opportunistically for centuries) until they had exhausted all
other avenues for redress. As Merchant documents, immiserated
craftworkers pressed for the enforcement of regulations governing their
trades that were already on the books, petitioned parliament to enact
basic labor protection laws, and proposed alternatives that would enable
manufacturers to make a profit without reducing their employees to
penury. For these efforts, they were ignored and mocked by turns.
Ironically, the machine wrecking for which Luddism became notorious was
“the bargaining tool of last resort.”2
Given the intransigence of the governing and employing classes,
Merchant insists, the Luddites’ recourse to this tactic “was, if
anything, a logical response.”3
