The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brains

  • L7HM77@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    12 hours ago

    Was gonna bring up the same point about Luddites. They were absolutely pro-automation.

    They saw greedy corporations using automation, and getting ready to fuck their society into the dirt, so they started petitioning their local governments, tried to negotiate and drew up the plans for a social security program ~150 years before one was actually implemented, smashed a bunch of expensive corporate equipment when the government wouldn’t respond, then the government sided with corporate, used the military to drag all the men, women, and children into public squares and executed every last one of them. Even relatives and companions that weren’t in the group and didn’t participate. So thoroughly annihilated that it left an informational pinhole in the history books, and the name was co-opted into an insult. Now we’re really not sure if John Ludd even existed, maybe the name was just a mythical legend already, and was used as a rally point to boost morale.

    And here we are, barely 200 years in the future, about to repeat the fuzzy spots again and rediscover why we brought citrus fruits with us on the ships, with the general population completely oblivious to the brutality the owner class is ready and able to deploy.

    What happens if the tech bros are right, and the machine doesn’t need 9/10ths of the human population any more?