We live in this changing world, I am always looking for books that help me think a little more deeply about the challenges of the day and age, especially when it comes how technology affects our lives.
The recent books that have helped shape my understanding include “Ankani Valley” by Anna Viner, who pierced the bubbles of the technical industry and questioned me how many of them could be naked.
“Verified: How to think directly, at least become, and make better decisions about what to do” Mike Kaulfield and Sam Wineberg armed me with strategies to take me from the flood of independent untrue through social media. And recently, Kyle Chaika’s “Filterworld: How Algorithm Flated Culture” made me sensitive to how much I consume in the media, algorithm pruning is the product, and when I allow my taste to flow with aggregation, I need to be more cognitive.
In this group, I am adding “Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Ribelian Against Big Tech” of Brian Merchant. This book is mainly a type of corrective history of ludite movement, but in the hands of the merchant, it is also a history that helps us understand the present better.
Until a period of recently trimmed, merchant Los Angeles Times was a technical columnist, who often used to take a contradictory positions about technological progress, questioned whether some of these progresses were really beneficial for society. In retailing the story of Ludits of Merchant, he attempts to expand and complicate the popular image of a group of people who stood in the way of technological advancement out of wrong fear or superstition.
In fact, the merchant shows how ludits were not anti-technology blankets. Early 19th century, these textile workers were reacting against the thoughtless replacement of their high quality human labor with the work of inferior (but cheap) machine instead. His concerns were really existing, not backward or superstitious. In return, technology was coming to take up its livelihood and life ways without any compensation offer.
Explained through a series of short stories, the trader survives the past, depicting each important moments in the movement, including these people and their objectives, including a person, who was never present, “Ned Lud,” a legend said that a legend said that he had destroyed the machinery of his factory owner who came to stand as a symbol for the movement.
I lost the track of the time that I wrote “I didn’t know” in the margin.
In the latter part of the book, the merchant combines the history of the industrial revolution with today’s technical disintegration, showing how much and how little has changed. He uses the example of the Daug Shifter, a person who had logged around 5 million miles from around Manhattan since 1981. But after the arrival of Uber, he found that the work that was done for 40 years went to 120 hours a week to try to live life at the end before feeling it. In a public act of protest, the shifter took his life.
We can love Uber’s convenience, but the merchant’s book makes us sensitive to cost.
There is no simple solution here, and the businessman does not pretend to believe otherwise, but the conclusion of his book shows that we can demonstrate a literal rebellion if we are not ready to expand the care and ideas of those who are on one side in the name of progress.
Who knows? We can be those people.
John Warner is the author of “Twenty Way Way Cant Right: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essays and other requirements”.
“Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Ribelian Against Big Tech” by Brian Merchant. (Little, Brown & Company, September 2023)
Book recommendations from Buckleorkal
John Warner tells you what to read on the basis of the last five books you read.
1. “Ozark Dogs” by Ellie Cranor
2. “The Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murds and the Birth of the FBI” by David Gran
3. “Tomorrow’s detective” by Tom Bradby
4. “Fetful Words” by Paiz Shelton
5. By “The Wild Coast” by Lynn Anderson
– George R., Warsden
George Lewis Penny’s Inspector is a great candidate for the Ghanta series, which begins with “Still Life”.
1. James Lee Burke “white pigeon in the morning”
2. By “Texas by the Tail” by Zim Thompson
3. “Three bedrooms in Manhattan” by Georges Simonon
4. “Alice Network” by Kate Quin
5. “The Handed Years War on Palestine” by Rashid Khalaidi
– Harvey Y., Northbrook
The patience and mystery of Daniel Woodrel’s “Winter Bone” should be a good fit with Harvey.
1. By “French bride” Evelyn Anthony
2. “Beyond Highland Mist” by Karen Mary Moning
3. “Safe Heaven” by Nicholas Sparks
4. “Every breath” by Nicholas Sparks
5. “B To BB” by Jessica James
– Bonnie C., Rolling Meadows
So here we are watching a cross between romance and suspense. I am going to classic Gothic romance/suspense as “Rebecca” of Daffne Do Maurier.
Get a reading from Buckleck
Send the list of the last five books you read and your hometown [email protected],