Neo-Luddism is still opposition to a lot of modern technologies, but for a very disparate set of reasons. For example, many oppose the mass adoption of social media due to perceived mental health and social impacts. Others oppose smart phones and "screen addiction." These things can qualify as "neo-luddism" even though the opposition is not rooted in job displacement.
I've often said that I am myself becoming more and more of a "neo-luddite" but it's purely for personal reasons. I don't want to see social media or smart phones disappear as I couldn't care less about what other people do with their lives. I just find that the older I get, the less I want to use modern tech in general.
It might just be burnout and boredom. I am now middle aged and I've been coding since I was 10. I used to be extremely enthusiastic about technology but as time progresses I have less and less interest in it. The industry in which I have based my entire career just doesn't excite me anymore. Today I just couldn't care less about ChatGPT / "AI" / LLMs, Bitcoin, smart phones, video games, social media, fintech etc. In my free time I find myself doing more things like reading books, going hiking in the backcountry and pursuing craft-related hobbies like performing stage magic with my wife and partner.
I thought that this was me ("The industry in which I have based my entire career just doesn't excite me anymore."), but then I realized I actually am mostly just interested in programming the way some people are interested in any other skill or machine. Some people learn guitar because they need to make music and play out. Others just love playing the guitar, even and especially when nobody is watching, for its own pleasure.
To me, there is no greater toy than a programming language. ChatGPT is neat, but it isn't a programming language. Same for blockchain or agile or whatever other trend is happening in the industry. Some of the trends literally are new programming languages! Golang is really fun! So is TypeScript!
Some trends or technologies make programming even more fun (in my opinion anyway) and I embrace those feverishly: distributed version control, CI/CD, pair programming (sometimes it's even more fun with a friend!), configurable linters like Perl::Critic, Intellisense, JUnit-style testing frameworks. All this stuff helps me feel more in control of the computer (or distributed cluster of computers), which I've discovered is the main thing that gets me off about programming.
I'm even still hopeful that LLMs will have some role to play in my having more fun with programming. I've tried CoPilot and so far it hasn't grabbed me, but maybe this will change. In any case, there are clearly other people having fun with it so I guess that's good. Maybe somebody can find joy by debugging GPT-4 prompts the same way I enjoy pouring over stack traces.
I'm a "maker." Although I try to bring a level of "craftsmanship" to my code, and I care a great deal about code quality, refactoring and solving problems at the code level - and I definitely enjoy the process - it is still a means to an end. It is the configuration of raw materials that contribute to the final form of something useful and tangible.
The most tragic part is realizing that it is very unlikely that I will ever care about what it is that I am producing in tech. I was self employed for 15 years and that was extremely rewarding because the business and the product was my vision, my creation etc. Now that I am back in the job market I find that what was a career for 20 years has become "just" a job. I am making something, and that matters, but I'm not making something I would personally use as an end-user. And that is not a slight against the things I am making. They are useful to someone. Just not to me. I have spent the last few years thinking about what it would look like to make something I myself use and that's when I realized that, relatively speaking, I hardly use any tech as an end-user in my personal life at all.
I could have written this myself. I'm currently going the scary "bootstrapped founder" route because at least the tool I'm paid to work on is something I care about and I can put a lot of my craftsmanship on.
But in general my long term goal is to go write mini Lisp interpreters in a cabin in the woods, and move away from the direction Big Tech is going.
I love computers, software, but I would not say I love technology anymore, nor I think that the Internet is a net benefit for humanity anymore. It's been quite hard to accept that my view of the tech world has turned upside down in no more than a couple years.
Though when my wife and I have talked about "going off grid" and living remote, she wanted to understand my limits and asked about electricity.
I pointed out that electricity led to the discovery of logic gates, which led to integrated programmable circuits, which led to the Von Neumann Architecture, which led to Ethernet, which led to the Internet which led to Twitter.
The demographics of this site are getting older (you can see a recent-ish poll on the site for some indication.) The same phenomenon was on Slashdot in the '00s writ large also. Lots of older disgruntled engineers who hated how the MPAA and RIAA controlled all of software, snooped everyone's packets, and how when they started in the industry in the '80s people took pride in shipping shrinkwrapped software. It's an interesting pathology but, like all pathologies, it becomes tiring on the site when people bring it up constantly.
Hype cycle topics seem to attract opinionated folks who have strong feelings on topics and have the need to shout them from the rooftops, whether that's doomer, booster, or luddite. That's what I find exhausting.
I feel the same. I don’t have the same kind of enthusiasm now as I do a kid.
I’ll also say, I think LLMs are different than bitcoin. It has its own killer app, and it has tremendous social impact, not necessarily positive. If anything, crypto doesn’t really make sense without AIs.
One thing though is that the foundational models are created and controlled by big tech. It’s been compared to silicon fabs and its scales of economy … However, I don’t see a future where foundational models can only be created by large orgs with a lot of resources is something beneficial for society.
You sound like me. Middle aged and tired of the bullshit.
The difference is I'm mostly tired of the social garbage that keeps piling up on top of things. The competitiveness, the pressure to "be productive", the grifters, the capitalists who put money before people, the bureaucrats. It's never enough more more more faster faster faster meanwhile the roadblocks that are put in place get bigger uglier and stickier than ever.
I just stopped participating in that stuff. Got off Facebook. Got off Twitter. Curated my Reddit feeds to be built around useful and helpful communities, not reactionary meme-ified BS. Started reading more. Started using RSS again (but again a reduced and focused subset of useful sites).
I'm feeling much better and I still find I enjoy technology. Microelectronics, 3d printing, functional programming, distributed systems.
I'm working on a cloud connected garage door opener. I don't care that it's never going to be productized. I don't care that I can go an Alibaba and order one for $15. I'm just doing it because I want to work on my microelectronics skills and I find it fulfilling. I'm doing it my way, at my own pace, without the BS.
If I had to pick one "beginner resource" for the absolute newbie then it's hard to beat the book "Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic." From there you can decide what interests you and thus where to go next, since magic is such a broad field.
One of the reasons I love it so much is that it is a multi-skill discipline and it's really a type of theatre so it can be kept as simple and narrow or as broad and open ended as you want it to be.
Neo-Luddism is still opposition to a lot of modern technologies, but for a very disparate set of reasons. For example, many oppose the mass adoption of social media due to perceived mental health and social impacts. Others oppose smart phones and "screen addiction." These things can qualify as "neo-luddism" even though the opposition is not rooted in job displacement.
I've often said that I am myself becoming more and more of a "neo-luddite" but it's purely for personal reasons. I don't want to see social media or smart phones disappear as I couldn't care less about what other people do with their lives. I just find that the older I get, the less I want to use modern tech in general.
It might just be burnout and boredom. I am now middle aged and I've been coding since I was 10. I used to be extremely enthusiastic about technology but as time progresses I have less and less interest in it. The industry in which I have based my entire career just doesn't excite me anymore. Today I just couldn't care less about ChatGPT / "AI" / LLMs, Bitcoin, smart phones, video games, social media, fintech etc. In my free time I find myself doing more things like reading books, going hiking in the backcountry and pursuing craft-related hobbies like performing stage magic with my wife and partner.