Neo-Luddite Reading Group

Schedule Resources The Technological Society

Time and Place:

"To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life."
-Pope Leo XIV

Contact:
neoluddite@victorgom.es

Bluesky
Substack The 2nd Thursday of each month 6:30-8:30 EST in-person at Iffy Books. There is also a virtual option for accessiblity purposes, also hosted by Iffy Books

Email neoluddite@victorgom.es to be added to the mailing list! Necessary for receiving the jitsi link (video-conferencing software we will use) and if you'd like to join the zulip chat.

The issues and harms surrounding emerging technologies are especially concerning given the lack of regulation in the tech industry generally, and the tendency of productivity-increasing technology to further concentrate power in the hands of the few. This reading group will explore these risks and engage with how they work in the hopes of better organizing to protect the rights of workers and individuals. The goal is to have a better understanding of the costs (data, carbon, human labor) and risks (misinformation, unpredictability, bias) of making these machines, as well as limitations in what they can learn about the world primarily through data scraped from the internet.

We're currently reading Magnifica Humanitas, the encyclical on Artificial Intelligence by Pope Leo XIV.

Archived pages of our previous books include: The Technological Society, The Internet Con and Tools for Conviviality, Abolish Silicon Valley,The Unaccountability Machine, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Life After Cars, Mood Machine, Technics and Civilization, The Whale and the Reactor, Slow Down or Die, Small is Beautiful, Empire of AI , Who Owns This Sentence?, The Mechanic and the Luddite, Why We Fear AI, Cybersecurity and Obfuscation, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Resisting AI, The Human Use of Human Beings, Race After Technology, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, and The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence. If you'd like to learn more about me, you can visit victorgom.es for a bio.

Schedule

If you're joining for the first time, I'd suggest you read this before anything else for brief context: What the Luddites Really Fought Against by Richard Conniff.

The only expectation is that you read the chapter(s) of the book that's listed for that meeting. You're still welcome to participate if you haven't done the readings as long as you are mindful. For each chapter, I've also noted some optional readings for context, so I'd suggest checking those out rather than reading ahead in the book. And remember, if you ever find yourself struggling with any of the readings or concepts, reach out! Either directly to me over email or to the entire group over discord.

Additional resources