Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age

by Kirkpatrick Sale

Book Overview

Kirkpatrick Sale is at the tumultuous center of a technology backlash, actively challenging Bill Gates on the one hand and the Unabomber on the other. The subject of bets, barbs, and grudging praise... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201407183
• ISBN13: 9780201407181
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A science writer reviews Kirkpatrick Sale

Kirkpatrick Sale is one of the visionary writers of our time, and deserves a much wider audience. This book rescues the reputation of the unjustly maligned workers who fought against some of history's cruelest businessmen. Contrary to myth, the "Luddites" were not knee-jerk foes of any technological change; they were workers fighting to protect their jobs and families from businessmen interested only in profit. No one who reads this book (and who cares more about people than gadgets) will ever again use the word "Luddite" as a term of opprobrium.

provocative, good!

Excellent, provocative work. Calls into question the whole progressivist paradigm of Western Liberal thought...definite good lesson to all those with naively sunny visions of the .com future...Strongly recommend Mark Lutz & Kenneth Lutz if you liked this book.

A Thoughtful overview on The Crisis of Postindustrialism

I really liked this book, especially Mr. Kirkpatrick's excellent way of summarizing at the end of the book the various aspects or qualities of innovation which the other reviewers have already mentioned. It is a thoughtful and memorable book, and one very helpful in helping the reader to understand just how important taking personal responsibility for the world we live in has become. I recommend it for anyone interested in where we've been, where we are, and where we may be going!

Insightful, Interesting & Thoughtful Look At The Luddites!

"Rebels Against The Future" is a book with an important, relevant, and timely message. Written by Sales Kirkpatrick, long-time editor of "The Nation", who describes the historical struggle for human rights against the forces of technological innovation by way of the saga of Ned Ludd & his followers. By detailing this example, the author illustrates how difficult it is, both historically and culturally, for individual workers & ordinary people to successfully come to terms with the anonymous and often overwhelming forces of an intractable and self-propelled technical dynamic; industrial progress. I first came across this book last year by way of the internet; an excerpt of it was posted on a neo-Luddite site I was browsing through. Reading this short portion hooked me on Mr. Kirkpatrick's writing style and substance. This is a book ostensibly devoted to the iconoclastic revolt by a small but determined group of nineteenth century English cottage workers against the hurtful introduction of new machines that, in essence, deprived them of an opportunity to make a living and support themselves and their families. It was the first documented account of a group rebelling against the enforced imposition by industrialists of new technology that was contrary to their own social and economic interests. It was not all machinery that the so-called "Luddites" rebelled against; it was only those technological innovations "but all Machinery hurtful to Commonality". Heforwards an impressive, multi-faceted argument; each facet of the argument bearing on various aspects of what the author associates with various characteristics of technologies. Thus, Kirkpatrick ascribes a "motif industriale" on such technologically-based innovation such that; first, technologies are never neutral, & some are hurtful; second, industrialism is always a cataclysmic process, destroying the past, roiling the present, making the future uncertain; third, only those serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines, fourth; the nation-state, synergistically intertwined with industrialism, will always come to its aid and defense, making revolts futile and reform ineffectual; fifth, that resistance to the industrial system, based on moral principles and rooted in some sense of moral revulsion, is not only possible but necessary; sixth, that resistance to industrialism must force not only "the machine question" but the viability of industrial society into public consciousness and debate; seventh, philosophically, resistance to industrialism has to be embedded in an ideology that is morally informed, carefully articulated, and widely shared; and eighth, if industrial civilization does not eventually crumble from determined resistance within its walls, it seems certain to eventually crumble of its accumulated excesses and instabilities.Of course, the lessons from the experience of the Luddites are central to the issues of

An Eloquent, Provocative & Thoughtful Critique !

"Rebels Against The Future" is a book with an important, relevant, and timely message. Written by Sales Kirkpatrick, long-time editor of "The Nation", the book describes the historical struggle for human rights against the forces of technological innovation by way of the saga of Ned Ludd & his followers. By detailing this example, the author illustrates how difficult it is, both historically and culturally, for individual workers & ordinary people to successfully come to terms with the anonymous and often overwhelming forces of an intractable and self-propelled technical dynamic; industrial progress. I first came across this book last year by way of the internet; an excerpt of it was posted on a neo-Luddite site I was browsing through. Reading this short portion hooked me on Mr. Kirkpatrick's writing style and substance. This is a book ostensibly devoted to the iconoclastic revolt by a small but determined group of nineteenth century English cottage workers against the hurtful introduction of new machines that, in essence, deprived them of an opportunity to make a living and support themselves and their families. It was the first documented account of a group rebelling against the enforced imposition by industrialists of new technology that was contrary to their own social and economic interests. It was not all machinery that the so-called "Luddites" rebelled against; it was only those technological innovations "but all Machinery hurtful to Commonality". He forwards an impressive, multi-faceted argument; each facet of the argument bearing on various aspects of what the author associates with various characteristics of technologies. Thus, Kirkpatrick ascribes a "motif industriale" on such technologically-based innovation such that; first, technologies are never neutral, & some are hurtful; second, industrialism is always a cataclysmic process, destroying the past, roiling the present, making the future uncertain; third, only those serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines, fourth; the nation-state, synergistically intertwined with industrialism, will always come to its aid and defense, making revolts futile and reform ineffectual; fifth, that resistance to the industrial system, based on moral principles and rooted in some sense of moral revulsion, is not only possible but necessary; sixth, that resistance to industrialism must force not only "the machine question" but the viability of industrial society into public consciousness and debate; seventh, philosophically, resistance to industrialism has to be embedded in an ideology that is morally informed, carefully articulated, and widely shared; and eighth, if industrial civilization does not eventually crumble from determined resistance within its walls, it seems certain to eventually crumble of its own accumulated excesses and instabilities.Of course, the lessons from the experience of the Luddites are central to the is