Librarianshipwreck

A great source for this sort of question is Wikiquote. It classifies the quote as "misattributed"[0], and says that it "appears to be something Luxemburg could have said or written, but searches for a source have been unsuccessful". It cites this page[1] as evidence. [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg#Misattributed [1] https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/reference-desk-una…

Timely. 210 years ago today (Jan 2), 66 Luddites went on trial for destroying looms which had put 'half the population' (YMMV) out of work. The beef was legitimate then and still is. 'Advances' in tech (just as sound film did in 1927) can quickly create a lot of human pain (not that this forum needs a reminder) which may take a long time to moderate. "Why the Luddites Matter" [https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/why-the-luddites-m…

An interesting thread that points a couple of issues in the movie: https://twitter.com/vaishnavi/status/1307455391249301504 Summarizing: the people interviewed were not the one who should have been interviewed. People from in house policy temas and others are much more knowledgeable about this and have been raising these types of issues all along. It would also have helped to show a much more diverse picture than a bunch of repented tech bros. At the end of the thread, two additional posts reinforce and expand the message: https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/social-dilemma-netflix-technology… https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2020/09/17/flamethrowers-and-…

Always. And every now and then HN realizes it, then promptly forgets. Contrary to popular propaganda, the original Luddites weren't opposed to technology, they were opposed to the effect of technological progress on the working class. They knew that automation and mass production would be used to devalue labor, flood the market with inferior products, and that all of the benefits and profit from the industrial revolution would go to the corporations, at the expense of their quality of life. And they were correct. And modern day "Luddites" were correct about the centralization and commoditization of the web, social media, crypto and NFTs, Elon Musk and autonomous vehicles, and will be proven right about AI. Tech has nothing left to offer but grift upon grift. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-luddites-in… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37664682 https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/why-the-luddites-m… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17053994

Relevant: https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/why-the-luddites-m… > There is a widespread belief in contemporary computer dominated societies, that regular people are not allowed any say in the discussions around the types of technologies that radically reshape their lives. And the way that the term Luddite is commonly used functions to reify this belief by making people believe that they cannot push back against technology. Of course, as the above history demonstrated, the irony is that what the Luddites prove is that you actually can push back, you can build up a mass movement around it, and you can in fact be so successful that the government is forced to deploy soldiers and pass harsh legislation in order to squash you. > Need a more recent example? How about Google Glass. When Google unveiled that wearable high-tech headset it was framed as “inevitable,” those who raised worries were dismissed as “Luddites,” and Google seemed hellbent on pushing forward regardless. Google Glass was going to be the next thing, not because regular people wanted it to be, but because Google insisted that it would be. But a funny thing happened: people said no, and Google’s “world changing” product was shelved. There’s certainly a difference between the public rejecting a piece of consumer technology and workers pushing back against mechanization – but the common thread that connects them is that you do not have to let a tech company screaming “technological…

Libraries are a form of insurance against the societal costs of illiteracy, which is related to crime. http://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/if-you-want-to-see-… --- Though the library may appear to be free, the truth is quite different; it is not that the library borrower is getting things for free, it is that they have already paid. Libraries are the result of a community pooling resources (often gathered through taxes) for the funding and purchasing of materials that are then made available to all members of that community. ... Just as a community invests in infrastructure like roads, bridges and water management systems – a community invests in a library. Libraries, if you will, represent educational and intellectual infrastructure. A recognition that just as a road makes it easier to reach your destination, so too does access to information enable one to complete a journey of another sort. ... what occurs in a library is the development and maintenance through the economy of a genuine structure for sharing. Numerous people contribute a little and from this are able to get a lot, but the value they extract from their investment is not in the form of a sack of money with a dollar sign on it, but a larger social value. It is a value that would be diminished by turning it simply into a profit-generating scheme. ---