Re: Luddites and Luddism, I read this recently and thought I'd share it here:

"Perhaps you’ve heard that the Luddites were technophobic thugs who smashed steam-looms because they feared progress. That’s an ahistorical libel. The Luddites weren’t technophobes, they were highly skilled tech workers. Textile guilds required seven years of apprenticeship — Luddites got the equivalent of a master’s from MIT.

Luddites didn’t hate looms. They smashed looms because their bosses wanted to fire skilled workers, ship kidnapped Napoleonic War orphans north from London, and lock them inside factories for a decade of indenture, to be starved, beaten, maimed and killed.

Designing industrial machinery that’s 'so easy a child can use it,' isn’t necessarily a prelude to child-slavery, but it’s not not a prelude to child-slavery, either.

The Luddites weren’t mad about what the machines did — they were mad at who the machines did it for and whom they did it to."

https://doctorow.medium.com/there-is-always-an-alternative-e55fd414d1fd