What Will the Next Tech Rebellion Look Like? Ask the Luddites

In 1811 working men felt threatened by the arrival of wooden, waterâpowered looms. And yet "The Luddite rebellion came at a time when the working class was beset by a confluence of crises that today seem all too familiar..." writes Los Angeles Times technology columnist Brian Merchant. In an upcoming book called Blood in the Machine, he writes that "amid it all, entrepreneurs and industrialists pushing for new, dubiously legal, highly automated and laborâsaving modes of production."