Kirkpatrick Sale is at the tumultuous center of a technology backlash, actively challenging Bill Gates on the one hand and the Unabomber on the other. The subject of bets, barbs, and grudging praise in the pages of WIRED, The New York Times, Newsweek, and The New Yorker, Rebels Against the Future takes us back to the first technology backlash, the short-lived and fierce Luddite rebellion of 1811. Sale tells the compelling story of the Luddites’ struggle to preserve their jobs and way of life by destroying the machines that threatened to replace them; he then invokes a new-Luddite spirit in response to today’s technological revolution and calls for another sort of rebellion: not one of violence but rather of intellectually and ethically sound protest.
The first popular history of the rebellion against technology that still reverberates today. In the 1990s we use the term "luddite" to refer to anyone not enamored of technology. Now the author of The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy takes us back to the time when being a Luddite could get you hanged.| Preface to the Paperback Edition |
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ix | |
| Author's Note |
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xi | |
| Introduction |
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1 | (6) |
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``With Hatchet, Pike, and Gun'' |
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7 | (18) |
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The First Industrial Revolution |
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25 | (36) |
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The Luddites: November--December 1811 |
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61 | (30) |
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The Luddites: January--April 1812 |
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91 | (34) |
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The Luddites: April--May 1812 |
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125 | (28) |
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The Luddites: May 1812--January 1813 |
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153 | (34) |
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187 | (18) |
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The Second Industrial Revolution |
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205 | (32) |
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237 | (24) |
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Lessons from the Luddites |
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261 | (20) |
| Timeline |
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281 | (4) |
| Acknowledgments |
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285 | (2) |
| Source Notes |
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287 | (24) |
| Index |
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311 | |
Kirkpatrick Sale is a contributing editor of The Nation and the author of many books, including Conquering Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy.
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