The term "Luddite" historically refers to early 19th-century English textile workers who destroyed machinery they believed threatened their jobs amid the Industrial Revolution.

Contrary to common belief, these Luddites were not opposed to technology per se but resisted how new machines were implemented in ways that harmed workers’ rights and livelihoods.

Their primary concern was the unfair labor practices surrounding mechanized production, not the technology itself.

The moniker traces to the possibly apocryphal figure Ned Ludd, symbolizing opposition to oppressive industrial changes .

In the 21st century, "Luddite" is used metaphorically to describe people or groups resistant to technological change or who express skepticism about new technologies.

This includes critics of artificial intelligence (AI) and associated innovations.

Some prominent figures, such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, have been ironically labeled modern Luddites due to their cautious stance on AI's risks, though they are recognized as pioneers rather than outright opponents.

The term also captures a broader social phenomenon of unease or opposition to rapid, large-scale technological transformations perceived as disruptive or dehumanizing .

Resistance to new technology in the modern era arises from several intertwined psychological, social, and economic reasons.

Key factors include:

1.

Fear of Job Loss and Economic Vulnerability: Analogous to the original Luddites, many workers today fear that automation and AI may replace human labor, leading to unemployment or devaluation of their skills.

This engenders apprehension about the pace and fairness of technological adoption, especially when labor protections are weak .

2. Distrust in Technology and Institutions:

Studies find segments of consumers and workers distrust new technologies, especially when benefits and risks are unclear or unevenly distributed.

Such distrust is also compounded where governmental or corporate motives are suspect .

The term "Luddite" historically refers to early 19th-century English textile workers who destroyed machinery they believed threatened their jobs amid the Industrial Revolution.

Title:

Content: Andrew Luck Finally Upgrades His Flip Phone … To Another Flip Phone

Intro: Andrew Luck has made it clear that he’s not interested in joining the world of smartphones. He’s just fine with his flip phone, and he finally got an upgrade this week.

INDIANAPOLIS — Has Andrew Luck finally turned in his ancient flip phone for a smartphone?

No. No he has not.

But, he did get a new flip phone this week.

The Indianapolis Colts quarterback on Thursday shared on his Facebook account that his mobile carrier had hooked him up with a new phone.

In June, Luck became the recipient of the most lucrative contract in NFL history, and many wondered if the fifth-year Stanford product was going to splurge on the newest smartphone for himself.

"One, I like it. It's a comfort thing," Luck said of not giving up the flip phone lifestyle. "I think anybody can appreciate that, if you're used to that. … Two, I don't think I want to be connected 24/7, and this phone is maybe sort of a reminder that you don't have to be connected. And it's nice to get away. It's nice to turn your phone off."

Luck's phone at that time — and his new one, we assume — can send and receive text messages, and for all the newest crazes in apps and technology, he says he has an iPad.

"What else do you need?" Luck asked. "I'm not a Luddite."

Luddite | Ludd·ite | Noun: "One of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly :  one who is opposed to especially technological change." Thank you, Merriam Webster.

Nice word choice, Andrew. Looks like his "Andrew Luck Book Club" is paying huge dividends.

While many of us (including the author of this article) remain glued to their smartphones, Luck is obviously content with what's gotten him to this point in life.

Smartphone or flip phone — or rotary phone — he's back on the field and healthy for the Indianapolis Colts, and that's all that should matter to his fans and his organization.

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Contrary to common belief, these Luddites were not opposed to technology per se but resisted how new machines were implemented in ways that harmed workers’ rights and livelihoods.

Title:

Content: Brian Merchant, author: “Luddites are more dangerous to the rich than Robin Hood”

The Luddites have been a great historical resource. Any showy enemy of anything that looked like technological progress has been called a Luddite. Today with generative artificial intelligence and its critics, the word has been revived. The author and journalist Brian Merchant (Iowa City, USA, 1983) saw it coming and has written a book that reviews the Luddite revolt in England at the beginning of the 19th century and its similarities with current technologies: Blood in the Machine (Blood in the Machine, currently without a planned edition in Spanish) thus explores the origins of the current revolt against big technology.

Although the book has appeared in the midst of the AI hype, Merchant began his research a decade ago: “Uber was growing and it was beginning to be seen that it was having a hard impact on taxi drivers, I heard the term Luddite from the pro-Uber sector and wrote an article titled You don't understand anything about Luddites”. Now in his book he remembers that the Luddite revolt was a labor struggle, not anti-technology, at a time when unions were prohibited. In a conversation with EL PAÍS from his residence in Los Angeles, Merchant clarifies the historical impact of the Luddites and the possible similar struggles that are being played today in Silicon Valley.

1. The Luddites were not against progress

The labor revolt over the loss of rights was more important than the destruction of textile machines: “The biggest mistake about the Luddites is to say that they were against technology and progress,” says Merchant. “They were against certain technologies because they recognized the way in which they were going to be used in their context against them as workers. It was a labor movement, against poverty, not anti-technology. The British Government began to mold them in this way almost immediately, it was keen to mock the Luddites and present the argument that they were against progress. It is very similar to how today people in positions of power in technology companies accuse those who complain about poor working conditions. It's the same story for 200 years.”

The book quotes a phrase from historian Eric Hobsbawm that explains this stage: “It was collective bargaining through riots.” According to Merchant, this tactic in a workers' struggle was very powerful for two reasons: “First, it was symbolic because everyone understood that what they were destroying was not just a machine. It was also the specific machine used to transfer wealth from the workers to the employer. Second, it was useful because they destroyed the equipment that businessmen needed.”

2. Why Robin Hood is better accepted than Ned Ludd

Ned Ludd was a legendary character. No one knows for sure if he existed. It was the legend of a teenager who would have broken the first machines at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In 1811, rebellious workers used his legendary name to sign letters and further scare: “Ludd probably never existed. But the incarnation of it would become a mascot, an organizational tool, a wink: a powerful 19th-century meme,” Merchant writes.

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Ludd lived near Nottingham (United Kingdom), like another legendary figure who has been better treated by history. There must be a reason, says Merchant: “The Luddites organized a popular and powerful rebellion. People wrote popular songs about them. They were like Robin Hood. But it is interesting that Robin Hood has endured as a positive light, while the Luddites have not. He suggests that the myth of Ned Ludd is in some ways more dangerous to the elites and the wealthy than that of Robin Hood, which is a little more nebulous and open. The Luddites say: go ahead and break the machines of your oppression. Robin Hood says: steal from the rich and give to the poor. “I think that’s a little more tolerable.”

3. How are they similar to today's problems?

The background of the book is that the history of the Luddites is similar to what happens today in Silicon Valley, where a small group of corporations dominate new technologies. “The way technologies are developed has basically not changed. You have a handful of people with access to enough capital or political influence to be able to build a factory and use automation technologies. “Back then, the most aggressive owners didn’t ask anyone how to find a way to make this a win-win.”

Merchant has received criticism for equating the great businessmen of 19th century England with 21st century America. But there are details that he does not see that far away: “The technology development process is in some ways even more undemocratic today than then. There is this immense pool of capital available to Silicon Valley innovators through venture capital. Uber wasn't profitable for 10 years, but they had access to that capital. Did anyone really like that? Did it work for workers and delivery people? Nothing mattered, they just had more money and moved on.”

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Their primary concern was the unfair labor practices surrounding mechanized production, not the technology itself.

The moniker traces to the possibly apocryphal figure Ned Ludd, symbolizing opposition to oppressive industrial changes .

Title:

Content: The new is the old well forgotten.
Where in the Network there was a fashionable insult to the opponents of AI
In the Internet discourse, deep in the study of sarcastic comments of anonymous persons, you can find the term "Luddite".
This label is often referred to as people who dare to express the slightest inclination to inhibit the constant development of artificial intelligence (AI).
Related video
Interestingly, such prominent figures as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have been awarded the Luddite Award, which is recognition of their cautionary position regarding the potential dangers associated with artificial intelligence.
During the ceremony, Robert D. Atkinson, the organizer of the award, noted: “Unfortunately, luminaries such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have contributed to the feverish refraction of hands about the impending apocalypse of artificial intelligence, ” writes IFLScience.
In Focus.Technology appeared its own Telegram-channel.
Subscribe not to miss the latest and exciting news from the world of science!
Atkinson also explained: "Do we consider any of them personally Luddites?
No, of course not.
They are pioneers of science and technology.
But they and others have done a disservice to the public — and undoubtedly have helped and comforted the increasingly common neo-Luddist impulse in modern society — by demonizing AI in the popular imagination.
But how did the term come about?
Its roots can be traced back to the early 1800s in England.
Before the industrial revolution, skilled craftsmen who knew a lot about textile production made clothes using their own machines and specialized tools.
However, a situation arose when new technologies and methods of mass production appeared, as a result of which artisans were unable to compete.
The result was a movement whose purpose was the destruction of the textile industry and the destruction of new machines.
Although there is some truth to this story, it does not reflect the whole essence of the Luddite movement.
Their actions were not driven solely by a reaction to new technologies; rather, they were a response to the profound transformations taking place in their professional activities.
While it is true that they often attacked a knitting machine known as a stocking frame, as well as other mechanized fixtures, their main concern was the labor practices associated with these machines.
Kevin Binfield, editor of the Luddite and Compassionate Works, explained their motives: "They simply wanted machines to produce high-quality goods, and that these machines employed workers who had been trained and received fair wages.
It was their only concern. ”
The nickname "Luddites" comes from the nickname "Ned Ludd", an apocryphal figure who allegedly sabotaged a textile factory in 1779, although historical evidence suggests that this man was most likely a fictional one.
In a 2007 paper, researcher David Linton explained: “Some say that a young man, possibly with cognitive impairment, named Ned Ludd once misunderstood an order and accidentally broke his frame machine.
Others argue that this was done deliberately, in a fit of anger.
Whatever the motive, it seems to have become a joke phrase that whenever the machine breaks, for whatever reason, you can say something like, "Ludd must have been here."
From this construction, it is a short step to the ironic application of the name Ludd to vandalism for political purposes. "
Between 1811 and 1816, the Luddite movement held sporadic and somewhat unorganized protests, characterized by the destruction of cars and the burning of factories.
In response, the mill owners resorted to extreme measures, using deadly force against the Luddites.
In April 1812, there was a grim turning point in Huddersfield, where at least four people died at the hands of the mill owners.
In retaliation, the Luddites killed the owner of the mill, William Horsfall, who boldly declared his intention to "smear himself with Luddite blood to the saddles."
Horsfall was shot while sitting on his horse.
Faced with these uprisings, the government immediately sent thousands of soldiers to quell the protests.
Moreover, they adopted a law according to which the breakdown of cars was subject to the death penalty or sending to colonies.
Subsequently, the movement dissipated, but the stable expression "Luddite" could not accurately convey the ideals and goals of the Luddites.
Previously, Focus wrote about the first IPSO in the history of mankind.
It turns out that it was invented in Babylon and it concerns the Flood.

In the 21st century, "Luddite" is used metaphorically to describe people or groups resistant to technological change or who express skepticism about new technologies.

Title:

Content: Does AI make the arts poorer?
The real difference between the rich and the poor is the human mind.
▲ Since we have AI tools, we can do things quickly and well with a simple prompt, and the cost is low. (Illustration / Reuters)
2nd / Podcaster
I had a friend who had been unemployed for a while and asked me if I had a job for him to do, such as simple things like keeping an account and sorting out documents.
I said, if you asked me two years earlier, there must be, but unfortunately not now.
In the past, those chores took time, since the AI tool, as long as the simple prompt can be completed, the monthly fee is only a few hundred yuan, two or three hundred hourly wage students may not do so well.
He listened to me, didn ’ t believe it, and was curious to ask me how I use AI now.
In fact, the application is too broad and too complicated. To make him understand it as soon as possible, I cite my entire workflow as an example.
For example, when writing an article, in the stage of collecting materials, AI helps me to make notes of books / meetings / lectures / courses with speech, and the content is accurate and the grammar is strict. It can also be converted into various forms of charts, different lengths and various articles.
At the writing stage, I will discuss with AI what different topics can be cut into perspective, such as this article I want to know how AI is changing our society, ask it to help me summarize the main views on the Internet, and I will continue to ask for some details, and also ask it to grab the latest data for me.
Next, before po comes to the community, ask it to help me modify the typos and punctuation, the correction only takes a few seconds, and the text creation is basically completed.
I asked my friend, do you think you can do better, faster and cheaper than AI?
▲ AI can help users to take notes with voice, and the content of speech to text is accurate and the grammar is strict. It can also be converted into various forms of charts, different lengths and various articles.
(Chart / CFP)
Next, the image creation.
Now many devices, including WebCam and Monocular, the camera can lock the portrait to move in small amplitude, and even deliberately create a natural hand shake, self-portrait images are becoming more and more dependent on others.
Before the oral video, mainly rely on improvisation or reading, the former plays subtitles until the hand is broken, the latter has to get a reader to adjust the speed, now AI recognition subtitles are very common, the reader also evolved into the script will follow my words run (used readers will know how convenient this is), greatly speeding up the efficiency of recording videos.
It is also a technology derived from AI speech recognition: AI editing. Although it is not completely free from manual work, the editor is now editing by reading the text, without the need to listen with ears, which saves a lot of effort.
Music and images can be generated by AI, saving a lot of time to find materials and reducing the risk of copyright infringement.
As for the job that my friends are looking for, such as document processing and answering e-mail, I just write a SOP file to feed the robot, and it can do it flawlessly, and there is no need to rest for 24 hours.
It doesn ’ t matter if what is said above is not understood, in simple terms, I used to find two or three more people to deal with the process of chores, and it was replaced by AI, and AI did well and fast.
After all, it was all simple work.
▲ Document processing, e-mail and other things, as long as you write a SOP file to feed the robot, it can do flawless, and 24 hours without rest.
(Chart / CFP)
My friend is angry after hearing it.
I said, but I still need someone to help me, because I ’ m saving a lot of time now, have more capacity, and have the opportunity to make more money.
Do you do business sponsorship? Do you write creative scripts that are popular with young people? Do you have experience in IP marketing?
He was frustrated and said that he would not be those, as if he could only be eliminated.
Then he complained to me, saying that Taiwan's industry is serious, only the technology industry can make money, and other people live in deep water.
In fact, every technological innovation is like this, the British textile industry in the 19th century industrialization, a group of textile workers are also very angry at their loss of work, in the factory to destroy the loom.
These people are called Luddites. Now Luddites have become synonymous with opposition to technological progress. Most people also know that Luddites are marginal beings who will eventually die.
But it is obviously not accurate to attribute the fierce competition to the struggle for literature. In the example above, I am also a writer, but my property has leapt with the industrial revolution.
The difference is that I did two things: the first is the investment trend, and the second is that I treat AI as extremely cheap capital and use it to make money.
But I have taken advantage of resources, like I do not mix badly, will mix better, and mixed badly, will only mix worse.
Times change too fast, now this environment can not guarantee that you listen carefully to the classroom to teach those textbooks out of the society to eat, talent needs a flexible brain, as well as a variety of information judgment, to keep up with the pace of faster and faster technological development.
Then it is true that some people can not do, some people from the past to the present, all want to do the simplest job, they either can not find a job, or they have to get a lower salary than the robot.
▲ In the era of rapid technological changes, the advantages of language have been greatly weakened.
(Image from Google Translate)
In fact, education must be reformed as soon as possible, we need new departments, abolish some old departments, and now it seems like the pure language department of the college is really harming students, ensuring that they graduate and lose their jobs. (This sentence is easy to be misunderstood, it seems that I am belittling a particular department, I am not necessary.) And...
In my experience as a minor in Japanese at university, although I can also study culture and history, the advantages of language have been greatly weakened, and the teaching syllabus must be adjusted.)
The gap between the rich and the poor is inevitable, and policies can only try to avoid too many poor people, otherwise there will be social unrest.
Put on the beautiful idea of science fiction, before the civil unrest of mankind, I hope that robots will take care of our food like mothers.
Can you think about it? – I love this post.
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This includes critics of artificial intelligence (AI) and associated innovations.

Some prominent figures, such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, have been ironically labeled modern Luddites due to their cautious stance on AI's risks, though they are recognized as pioneers rather than outright opponents.

The term also captures a broader social phenomenon of unease or opposition to rapid, large-scale technological transformations perceived as disruptive or dehumanizing .

Title:

Content: Technology in the face of democracy
In September 2021, data scientist Frances Hogan resigned her position at Facebook and then revealed tens of thousands of pages of the company ’ s documents, research and correspondence, which were submitted to Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The documents, which sparked a storm of hate and lawsuits against Facebook and its CEO, indicate that the platform not only affects the mental health of adolescents, enables the spread of populist hate speech, and enhances the work of human trafficking gangs, but the company is aware of these drawbacks, and is either satisfied with them or unable to reduce them; contrary to what Mark Zuckerberg says about the platform ’ s ability and algorithms to provide a safer environment for teenagers. To contribute to the promotion of democratic values and the reduction of hate speech.
In this article, I do not want to try to prove the company ’ s intention or claim, but rather to trace the reasons that made such phenomena possible, whether on Facebook, Instagram or other social media platforms; which will lead us to the conclusion that this case does not apply to Facebook alone, and it is not related to someone ’ s intention or disability, but it is a fundamental characteristic of all the tech giants and determine how they work and dominate their business model. This is what the American economist Shoshana Zuboff calls “behavioral surplus value. ”
In Zuboff ’ s view, the tech giants of today ’ s world are operating on a single business model that Google established after the dot-com bubble in 2008 — one that doesn ’ t stop selling consumer data, information, and surveillance — what Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism, ” but rather establishes what Zuboff calls the“ prediction goods market, ” a market that relies on collecting user information from social networks and converting it into algorithms. able to predict their behavior.
These algorithms and their results are then sold to marketers, contestants in election races, or authoritarian governments to monitor consumers more broadly and make their control more monopolistic in the market.
Zuboff ’ s analysis will be very useful in understanding the phenomenon, which leads us to trace its historical roots in the first section of the article.
It seems that we will be facing a fundamental thesis that we will have to criticize, and this criticism is the first objective of the article.
There is a thesis led by Zuboff herself and shared by many of the top technicians in these companies, and a number of commentators and democratic politicians, all of whom argue that the phenomena revealed by the Hogan documents and other similar phenomena are real, but they seem to see it as a tax to be paid for the promised fruits of the technical world, and that algorithms are able to correct its course by themselves, especially Zuboff. Inside it is led by the “top minds of the business world. ”
The second argument the article will address is that a mere commodity such as the “prediction market commodity ” is hostile to democracy, the rule of law, equality, and privacy.
It is true that “surveillance capitalism ” is part of monopoly capitalism, but I would argue that it goes beyond this, and that its effects extend from the economy to all spheres of social life, especially its negative effects on the future of democracy.
The third thing we focus on is that falling into a pessimistic vision of humanity ’ s future under technology is just another facet of the rosy narrative promoted by tech giants of the story of the inevitable rise of technology, but in its pessimistic version.
The emergence of the forecasting market and behavioral surplus value
After the rise of neoliberal capitalism following the waves of inflation and recession in the 1970s, the authors of neoliberal programs decided that the policies of state intervention in the economy and the extension of social protection for the people were no longer profitable.
Neoliberalism retained the core elements of classical economic liberalism, such as freedom and individualism, but the role of the state in social protection and welfare programs was hotly contested by policymakers and legislators.
While some countries in Europe have pursued so-called systemic liberalism aimed at maintaining and expanding social protection programmes, notably Germany, Britain and the United States have gone the other way, reducing the role of the state in the economy and expanding market freedom, trade and international lending institutions at the expense of social spending.
Hence the story of monopolistic technology as we know it today began, coinciding with the collapse of the value of the shares of major technology companies in the so-called dot-com bubble in 2001, which was followed by severe frustration with the future of technology and its promise and ability to develop capitalism.
After that, Google took a step that will henceforth define the future of tech companies and their practices; the move is to abandon its hostility to advertising gains due to shareholder pressure.
Google has decided to increase advertising revenue through hell, which has opened the door for the rest of the companies to follow suit by monopolizing access to its users ’ data and using it in online promotion and marketing services, which has long been known as “data exhaustion. ”
Using its superior analytical capabilities, Google has adopted a new way of making money by building algorithms that can predict consumer behavior; from monitoring your online activity, for example, the algorithms recognize your buying habits and preferences and ways of diversifying your sources of consumption, and of course, the level and types of spending, and even your reluctance to buy a particular product when you receive an ad for another.
These algorithms provide sellers with not only real-time information about consumer preferences, but also predictions of consumer preferences in the near future.
With this behavioral revolution, excess data has become the basis for new prediction markets that we now know as targeted advertising.
This is what Zuboff calls “behavioral surplus-value, ” where a user ’ s online behavior, obscene and monopolized data, becomes a mine for value extraction and profit.
Google does not care about the consumer and his decisions, and this data is often taken without consent or acknowledgement from the consumer.
This new type of “prediction goods market ” quickly became a role model for all major Silicon Valley companies, and advertising became as important to Google as the development of the search engine on which the company was founded.
When Google went public in 2004, the company revealed that after adopting the plan, it increased its revenue from 2001 to 2004 by more than 3,500 percent.
Zuboff points out that Google CEO Sheryl Sandberg ’ s move to Facebook represented a magical, contagious transition to this new plan based on behavioral surplus value extraction, or “prediction goods trade, ” which is no longer limited to Silicon Valley companies since 2008, but has moved to sectors such as insurance, retail, healthcare, finance, entertainment, education, transportation, and so on, creating a“ new production pattern. ” Zubov is a whole “new environment ” of suppliers, producers, customers and market makers.
In that market, every product or service starts with “smart ” or“ customized, ” every device connects to the internet, and every “digital assistant ” is simply an interface for a supply chain of behavioral data that helps predict the future of what Zuboff calls the“ surveillance economy. ”
The “prediction goods market ” merges three categories into one:“ user, consumer, and consumer data, ” and this triad is henceforth just multiple facets of a single phenomenon, which Zuboff calls “indigenous people ” in the style of the colonial invasion and exploitation model.
Today we do not lack a plethora of expressions that attempt to describe what the technological market has changed the structure of global capitalism.
We will find “algorithmic capitalism, ”“ cognitive capitalism, ” “communicative capitalism, ”“ data capitalism, ” “digital capitalism, ”“ information capitalism, ” “platform capitalism, ”“ surveillance capitalism, ” and “virtual capitalism, ” to name a few.
Recently, then, capitalism is abandoning itself and retreating into a world of “data emperors, ” which is why this phenomenon has been called“ digital feudalism, ” “technological feudalism, ”“ information feudalism, ” or simply “new feudalism. ”
But if tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are not accumulating their wealth through capitalism ’ s old exploitative mechanisms of labor itself, and while today ’ s production process is not based on manufacturing, but on monopolistic control over data sets and algorithms to extract advertising revenues generated elsewhere in the capitalist economy, is this a new stage of capitalism?
The big companies that rely on technology do not make a profit, but their market value continues to rise due to speculation in the markets, representing what is known as the model of "selling growth", is this model considered a transgression of capitalism?
Is it a new form of “digital expropriation ” that fuels a new logic of accumulation that can be seen as a structural change in the structure of capitalism, similar to the model of“ accumulation by plunder ” posited by David Harvey in The New Imperialism?
Or is it, as Cedric Durand put it in his book “Technical Feudalism, ” that the tech giants are effectively subjecting us to their rule by controlling information and knowledge in a“ knowledge monopoly, ” thus creating ever more sophisticated means of seizing surplus value without getting involved in the production process?
Darwinism and counter-Darwinism
The main problem of technology today, and the way it extracts value through monopoly, is not merely that it is a monopoly, not that it leads us to a social reality similar to Big Brother ’ s world, but that it is based on a structural transformation of the labor market.
The merging of knowledge with technology and markets means that everyone who has nothing to sell will be despised, and a new kind of individualism will triumph, not the “liberal individualism ” promised by the liberal project, but a technical individualism that cares so much about the“ user-consumer-data ” triad. Achille Mbembe: “The Nasi ” who will be every day the firewood of a new“ trend ”, a new empty battle, incitement against minorities, or the fire of populism that has become the hallmark of our time.
What matters is that the individual is a vessel of data, a catalyst for more consumption of this class struggle that denies its nature on the Internet, for more gain, the Hogan documents published by the Wall Street Journal tell us.
It will now seem to every user aware that “contempt ” is the basic commodity of the Internet, as the statistics contained in the documents indicate that the most popular and promoted materials are the materials inciting hatred and intolerance against minorities and insults and self-generated nonsense every day, which are most able to acquire interested people who volunteer their data to participate in battles for gains, as leaked studies from Facebook Labs tell us. A humanistic library containing the most accurate information of community members that is updated in real time for the purposes of censorship and social regulation, as China ’ s experience tells us.
So it doesn ’ t stop at monopoly, it doesn ’ t break down into a pessimistic picture as terms like “feudalism ” or“ big brother ” are trying to tell us.
The problem with such critical attempts is that they confront conflict-based technical Darwinism with a counter-Darwinism stemming from what American businessman and writer Alvin Toffler in the 1960s called the “shock of the future, ” a disappointment in the ambition of resisting capitalism.
These thinkers now present technology to us as a new stage in our human history, as if it were irrelevant to the recent capitalist past.
Technology and its hostility to democracy
The philosophers of the Enlightenment preached historical progress, a linear time on a straight path to better and higher, but the irony of the history of progress is that every historical frustration we have experienced has turned the idea of progress against itself and portrayed history as an ominous march towards further degeneration and ugliness.
The present of technology is no exception: the fleeting hopes of the rise of technology, which heralded a future in which machine and man are allied against evil, have been transformed into an antithesis that foreshadows the merging of machine and evil into a tragedy in which man becomes the victim.
We just have to start by accepting that every sinister scenario we invent to terrorize ourselves is only a part of our history, built by human beings like us, and can be transcended.
Western intellectual traditions have traditionally explained and understood the modern political world through a dichotomy between the private and the public, with the private sphere centered on the family, personal life and self-reflection, and the public centered on public morality, communion, governance of the state, administration, and institution.
But there is a third scope proposed by the famous German political thinker Hanna Arendt that mediates these two arguments: the “social ” sphere where collective feelings, feelings, and preferences are concentrated among connected groups of people — a set of values that people share without agreement that express their hopes, moral biases, and vision for the future.
When democracy defeated Nazism in World War II, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s coincided with the rise of globalization, a set of public values had settled in the West, with the private between the values of conservative Christian families and the values of generalized individualism, dominated by capitalist values, the state of institutions, the free economy, and the decline of the welfare state.
The social sphere is dominated by the values of democracy, individualism, scientific appreciation, technical optimism, and other values that neoliberal capitalism reluctantly shared with democracy under the pressure of labor movements and social participation.
However, a greater aspiration is emerging within the institutions of neoliberalism, which has tended increasingly to abandon democratic values, with greater emphasis on reaping the benefits of globalization and wealth accumulation, and withdrawing from the industrial to the financial economy.
At the height of this ambition, technology and its investments waited for the attention they deserved.
Technology today is taking over human history, and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger once warned us that the problem of technology does not stop at the fact that our perception of the future is always linked to technology in a way that prevents us from imagining any future at all without thinking about it, but goes beyond that to the essence of technology itself, the social motivations behind its creation, reliance and attachment to it.
If it is the case that we are looking at technology as a savior who will arrive in the future to solve our tragedies at one time, and seeing it as a catastrophe that drags the present into an ominous future at another time, the tragedy here is not due to technology as a set of machines or tools to extract value, but rather to what led us to turn between these two extremes.
There are several reasons why the technical age is not a transgression of neoliberalism, not even a transgression of the worst.
One of these reasons is that the crisis of neoliberalism has manifested itself in a set of chronic problems that technology does not overcome and replace with other problems that require new thinking, but rather radicalize, expand and transfer to other spheres of social and individual life; or simply generalize them.
The Norwegian-American economist Thorstein Veblen argued more than a decade ago in his book The Theory of the Luxury Class that the capitalist class by its very nature tends to withdraw from the burden of engaging in the productive process, which culminates with the expansion of monetary capitalism and the increasing transformation of relations between the capitalist and other producers, producers and workers into creditors and debtors. Technical "user-consumer-consumer data", in which the debtor himself becomes the user, the worker, the consumer and the data miner that feeds the forecasting market.
This brings us to a second crisis caused by neoliberalism, the crisis of employment, which is usually presented as a problem independent of the rest of the productive system that gave rise to it.
It goes without saying that the tendency of capital to invest in debt products will attract a large amount of assets that were previously earmarked for investment in commodity production, which will have a negative impact on employment opportunities.
But if we look at the essence of this technological triad, we find that technological transformation is at the heart of this process: less reliance on labor, less wage labor, because the very existence of the triad “user ” on the Internet produces value by itself through an algorithm that works in a vacuum of its own, which is originally a set of programming phrases written by one or more people.
The programmer ’ s income may rise to unprecedented levels, and indeed this is happening, but on the other hand, the chances of employment will be very low.
Most importantly, it brings us to a third dilemma: social inequality will increase dramatically, as “knowledge workers ” will have all the opportunities, while anyone who finds nothing to sell in the commodity market relationships of forecasting will be shamed.
We shall live, or rather we shall live, in a new division of social positions in which knowledge becomes, by definition, logarithmic knowledge, and there will be no value left for any other profession that is unable to transform itself into the language of zeros and ones.
One of the most important characteristics of the modern technical sector is that it operates, to a significant extent, outside the framework of the law governing the rest of social life, in a situation similar to that of the medieval church of independent rule.
Technology ’ s work outside the law is due to two things: the “computational ambiguity ” inherent in the very nature of its work.
Western critics and philosophers of the law have long complained about the ambiguity of the law, about the multiplicity of cases of application of the law, and about incidents of social and human life, but now we are faced with a phenomenon so vague that the legislator is unable to understand the subject to which he will be asked to enact a legal framework to regulate his work.
We have all seen the expressions of the congressional committee at the hearing of Mark Zuckerberg against the background of his accusation of misuse of Facebook subscriber data for political purposes, a scene not without the horror on Zuckerberg ’ s face, but the signs of surprise and misunderstanding that the members of the hearing committee, as people of the world war generation unfamiliar with the Internet, are unmistakable.
The second thing that surrounds the mystery of the technology is the topics it deals with and depends on its transformation into commodities, and the pace at which this rapid and unprecedented process took place in history, a process that has no legal precedent, of course.
Did Google, for example, have to obtain permits from countries around the world to photograph its streets and monitor its maps in order to develop the Google Maps app?
Did an algorithm to track phones to detect traffic jams on motorways and pedestrians need the approval of a constitutional court in a country?
The answer is no, of course.
Even the most democratic legal solutions, especially those that the EU is doing through its various institutions and are already appreciated, trying to reduce the opportunities and possibilities of the technical monopoly, and trying to protect the privacy of its citizens against the transformation of their data into resources for extraction of value; they all seem to remain worthless for two reasons: First, they are trying to legalize the extraction of data that should not exist in the first place. Second, political and authoritarian uses for security control are attractive to any country with borders and sovereignty, especially at the first intimidation of its political borders, the harm of refugees to its national unity, or the harmony of its social fabric, as the case of China clearly illustrates.
Finally, technology relies on undermining individual self-determination, individual autonomy, and decision-making rights in favor of the unfettered flow of behavioral data that feeds markets that are ours but not ours.
This anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian tyrant is best described as a market-driven coup from above: the overthrow of a people hidden within a digital Trojan horse, without finally being able to emancipate.
Based on the power of human inclusion within it, this coup achieves exclusive concentrations of knowledge and power, that is, it is a form of tyranny that feeds on people, but not people.
Paradoxically, this coup is celebrated as “personalizing ” things, while ignoring, transcending, and replacing everything that is personal.
Source: The Island

Resistance to new technology in the modern era arises from several intertwined psychological, social, and economic reasons.

Key factors include:

1.

Fear of Job Loss and Economic Vulnerability: Analogous to the original Luddites, many workers today fear that automation and AI may replace human labor, leading to unemployment or devaluation of their skills.

This engenders apprehension about the pace and fairness of technological adoption, especially when labor protections are weak .

2. Distrust in Technology and Institutions:

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Content: Technological solutionism — the idea that tech developers can be trusted to innovate or code our way out of problems, and into prosperity — is on its way out. Individuals’ trust in tech and the companies who develop it has been eroded by innumerable failures. For businesses, it’s no longer acceptable to use technology without taking steps to ensure it’s trustworthy.

Regular people — and, increasingly, legislators and regulators — have reasonably been made skeptical by recent transgressions against individuals’ privacy, calcification of corporate or individual biases into life-altering algorithms, constant threats that new tech erodes their ability to make a living, and beta testing unsecured or faulty connected devices or vehicles on an unsuspecting populace. Looking at the near future, with generative AI and virtual worlds being implemented faster than we can track, the trust problem is only getting worse.

More tech isn’t going to solve this problem. Customers are looking at the choices that company leaders make and assessing whether those choices match individual consumers and citizens’ values — and whether they put people first. And because every company uses some form of digital technology in its operations and relationships with customers and partners, every company needs to worry about digital trust. “Digital trust programs are a necessity, and when done right, can be both a differentiator and enabler for a business. As demands rise for companies to show they are trustworthy, organizations should strive to build a digital trust strategy that meets or exceeds their customers’ expectations, not just what’s legally required,” according to Vikram Rao, Salesforce’s Chief Trust Officer and a member of the World Economic Forum Digital Trust Steering Committee.

Some companies may look at the problem and hope they can buy or hire their way out of it. In some cases, a new role, like a Chief Trust Officer or Chief Digital Trust Officer may help. But before CEOs and boards rush into creating a c-suite role as a panacea, they need to take a hard look at what exactly trustworthy technology looks like in the 21st century, how companies earn digital trust, and what changes and investments they need to make to do that.

What makes technology trustworthy?

No technology is inherently trustworthy or untrustworthy. After all, technologies have no agency in themselves; instead, as a character in the Afrofuturist film Neptune Frost puts it, “technology is only a reflection of us.” Trust in technology is a reflection of the decisions people make when they develop the tech, use it, and implement it. While there are many ways to think about trust, when the World Economic Forum convened business, government, and civil society leaders in the field of trustworthy tech, the assembled group reached this consensus: “Digital trust is individuals’ expectation that digital technologies and services — and the organizations providing them — will protect all stakeholders’ interests and uphold societal expectations and values.”

In this work, the Forum’s Digital Trust Community realized that the most important question to ask with regard to technology is not “how do you get people to trust technology?” Rather it’s “what do we need to do — as technology developers, owners, and users — to respect people’s values and expectations?” With the right mindset and the right goals, it’s possible to develop an effective and trustworthy strategy for the use of digital technology. At its heart, such a trustworthy tech strategy comes from consideration for the individuals subjected to new technologies (regardless of the technology in question).

With respect for individual rights and expectations in mind, a trustworthy digital technology strategy should identify the right goals. The World Economic Forum’s digital trust community offered three broad sets of goals:

  • Security and Reliability
  • Accountability and Oversight, and
  • Inclusive, Ethical, and Responsible Use

As Julie Brill, Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Officer and a member of the Forum’s Digital Trust Steering Committee said at the time, “the goals of any developer of AI or other technologies should mirror the goals of the organizations and individuals who use or encounter that technology. Shared goals of inclusivity and responsible use, strong privacy and security protections, and effective oversight are the foundational elements to building a trustworthy relationship between developers, their customers, and individuals who use the technology.” Users and consumers can better rely on technologies that protect them, that include their needs and match their values, and that have good governance practices baked in, to remediate any inadvertent harms.

How do you invest in digital trust?

Earning digital trust isn’t simple, and it can’t be automated. Rather it requires a series of judgment calls, investments, and organizational changes that reflect the totality of a technology’s likely impact on individuals. These shifts, encompassing the whole business, can only be orchestrated by company leaders. As Keith Enright, Chief Privacy Officer at Google and Digital Trust Steering Committee member, said, “decisions companies are making now about preparedness determine where they will be down the line in terms of trust.”

Becoming prepared to start earning back trust requires CEOs and Boards of Directors to do at least three things:

  • Define a vision for digital trust
  • Plan to act in more trustworthy ways
  • Recruit people who will help earn trust

The first investment leaders need to make is to take the time and energy to truly understand the impact of the technologies they create or deploy. Developing a realistic and comprehensive vision for how an organization uses technology in service of its goals and those of the people who rely on it determines how an organization will invest in digital trust.

Leaders should approach decisions involving technology with a clear sense of how those technologies reflect and impact core organizational values and the values of the society in which the business operates. Their vision for creating or adopting new technologies must consider both the benefits to the business and society alongside a clear and responsible assessment of the potential harms new technologies might impose on potential customers or other stakeholders.

For example, a business adopting generative AI must assess how the technology might increase efficiencies (a benefit to the business), unlock new solutions to pressing challenges (a benefit to society) while also developing a plan to prevent expected harms, for example, to democratic processes from AI “hallucinations” or misinformation and to workers displaced by these advanced technologies. Only a vision that responsibly considers both the benefits and the risk of new technology can truly be considered trustworthy.

After deciding on a vision that includes trustworthy goals, organizations need a plan to act for digital trust. This plan requires leaders to invest in the internal structures and teams that best support digital trust. For all applications of digital technology, the Forum’s work identified eight dimensions where positive action can help achieve an organization’s goals — both trust goals and overall financial or strategic goals. Those dimensions are cybersecurity, safety, transparency, interoperability, auditability, redressability, fairness and privacy. (As with the Digital Trust Goals, these dimensions are defined and explored in the Forum’s Insight Report, Earning Digital Trust: Decision-making for Trustworthy Technologies.)

In most organizations, these areas likely fall to different departments and leaders, which means optimizing them requires an interdisciplinary approach — and possibly some structural change — in order to support the careful decision-making required to earn trust from users and other stakeholders. However, the realities of a given industry or company may mean it’s not possible to maximize every one of the dimensions described. For example, greater transparency may not be possible for companies who work in highly-sensitive industries (e.g., national security), so their accountability and security would have to supplement. Similarly, some dimensions of trustworthiness (perhaps most noticeably privacy) vary between jurisdictions and geographies. People’s expectations and values are the litmus test for what makes technology trustworthy. Trust, itself, may be highly region and industry specific.

The third big initial investment is in the people who can help the business earn digital trust. Making technology trustworthy is a multi-faceted effort conducted on an organizational (or societal) scale — which means that ultimate responsibility for trustworthiness falls to the CEO. This general duty of trustworthy technology decision-making doesn’t mean, however, that the business shouldn’t invest in recruiting experts (maybe even on the c-suite), who can help establish the right strategy, and the right structures, to support digital trust.

This leader, possibly a Chief Trust Officer — but just as likely to be the Chief Privacy Officer, General Counsel, CISO, or another executive — must be both an expert in stakeholder management and a trusted counselor to the CEO and the board. Stakeholder management comes into play where companies already have cybersecurity, privacy, compliance, and even ethics functions. The leads for each of those roles has a stake in the overall trustworthiness of the digital strategy of a company — in both building it and benefiting from it. In order to be a counselor on digital trust, this individual must also be able to think systemically — bridging between these disciplines in order to help leaders make the best judgement call on how, where, and toward what ends new technologies should be applied.

In order to be most effective, an officer responsible for digital trust can’t be an expert on every technology and every facet of trust, rather they have to be able to understand the strategy for the company and the values of affected individuals, workers, and customers. They support development of a trustworthy vision by conveying a system-wide picture of what the technology landscape looks like to CEOs and boards and helping build a strategy that supports trust rather than erodes it. They also help oversee the myriad and interdepending actions that, taken together, earn trust from users, partners, and other stakeholders.

CEOs must understand that trust in the technology that underlies and enables virtually every business can’t be bought, but by investing in the time it takes to make the right decisions, establish a trustworthy vision, and recruit effective supporters, it can be earned.

Studies find segments of consumers and workers distrust new technologies, especially when benefits and risks are unclear or unevenly distributed.

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How can companies address consumers who are averse to products using a novel technology?

Researchers from IE Business School and Indian Institute of Management Shillong have published a new study that examines why certain consumers are averse to products using a novel technology and what strategies marketers can use to remedy this aversion.

The study, which appears in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Adoption of New Technology Vaccines" and is authored by Laura Zimmermann, Jeeva Somasundaram, and Barsha Saha.

In October 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency-use authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Novavax. This was the third coronavirus vaccine available to Americans, but the only one not made with messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. The shot was marketed as an alternative for those who were skeptical of vaccines made with mRNA technology.

The COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna introduce a piece of mRNA that corresponds to a viral protein, usually one found on the outer membrane of the coronavirus. The recognizes this foreign protein and produces antibodies to fight it. These antibodies remain in the body even after the pathogen has been destroyed. If exposed to the virus after receiving an mRNA-based vaccine, antibodies can quickly recognize and fight it before it causes serious illness.

The skepticism about mRNA centers around claims that it could spread itself throughout the body and alter the basic DNA of those vaccinated. This belief persists despite several leading scientists and policymakers assuring the public that the mRNA is broken down shortly after vaccination and does not stay in the body.

This new study finds that certain consumers are surprisingly averse to products described as employing a , like vaccines based on mRNA technology. The researchers investigate how consumers react to technological innovations that have the following specific features:

  • When consumers cannot test and trial the new product to reduce uncertainty
  • When the new product might lead to a health loss
  • When other consumers' adoption of the might undermine the importance of the new technology

Examples of such innovations are mRNA vaccines and other pharmaceutical products, and also products such as nanoparticle pesticides, lithium-ion battery technology, and hydrogen energy.

Zimmermann explains, "We find that consumers demand higher vaccine efficacy to offset the higher perceived uncertainty that surrounds a new technology compared to a traditional vaccine. On average, our participants required a 19% higher vaccine efficacy to adopt a new technology vaccine."

This aversion was more pronounced among certain consumer segments, such as people who have little trust in their government. Consumers less inclined to embrace new technology in general were also more likely to avoid a vaccine employing new technology. Finally, consumers who are risk-averse, especially regarding small probabilities of losses, tended to show a stronger aversion to adopting a new technology vaccine.

Nudges to 'follow the herd'

One way to reduce this aversion is with a social proof nudge: to communicate that other consumers have adopted the new technology.

"When we communicated that a higher percentage of the population had adopted the new technology, people saw it as a proxy trial experience, which reduced their uncertainty. They were therefore more likely to 'follow the herd' and adopt the new technology," says Somasundaram.

But this strategy can be a double-edged sword: When people know that a high percentage of the population has taken up a vaccine, they might be less likely to vaccinate because they believe they are protected due to herd immunity.

Saha says, "Our research indicates, however, that a social proof nudge has an overall net positive effect in this context and reduces aversion to new technology vaccines." The same pattern applies to other domains such as novel energy-efficient technology (i.e., hydrogen energy heating, lithium-battery cars), nanoparticle pesticides, and other pharmaceutical products.

Lessons for marketers and policymakers

  • Marketers can identify consumers with low trust in government, low technology readiness, and high aversion to risk based on their willingness to pay for , past purchases of high-tech products, and their age and education level.
  • Companies can adjust their communication strategies to better connect with different groups of consumers by predicting how each would respond to the introduction of new technologies.
  • Consumers can make more informed choices about new technology by understanding how their personal beliefs and attitudes, such as trust in government and risk preferences, as well as social proof nudges influence their choices.
  • Policymakers and marketers must carefully consider the potential (long-term) risks of new technology and respect the autonomy of decision makers. This is because social proof nudges might bias information processing in ways that lead consumers to overlook uncertainty when they should not.
  • When a technology's greatest need lies in communities prone to distrust (e.g., new technology pesticides for farmers in ), marketers should understand the root causes of distrust, seek feedback, and focus on reducing the perceived uncertainty in a transparent fashion because exaggerated claims may contribute to further distrust.

More information: Laura Zimmermann et al, Adoption of New Technology Vaccines, Journal of Marketing (2023). DOI: 10.1177/00222429231220295

Journal information: Journal of Marketing

Citation: How can companies address consumers who are averse to products using a novel technology? (2024, April 16) retrieved 16 April 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-04-companies-consumers-averse-products-technology.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

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Such distrust is also compounded where governmental or corporate motives are suspect .