Message Font: Serif | Sans-Serif Subject: Re: Lost jobs, looking
at wrong thing? Date: 10/6/2012 3:47 PM Recommendations: 3
There is no way to reverse this as technology improves. How do
we deal with that?  I first became aware of this question when I
read Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut. Now there was a real
dystopia!  But of course Vonnegut was not the first to wonder
about this. Back in 1811-12 the "Luddites" of Nottingham,
England, went on an infamous anti-machine rampage. They were
specifically protesting the introduction of wide-frame automated
looms that could be operated by unskilled labor, thus throwing
out of work thousands upon thousands of skilled textile weavers
who had been using handlooms. Such was their fame (or infamy)
that to this day anti-mechanization movements are known as
Luddites.  Ned Ludd, for whom the Luddites were named, was
apparently a mentally-retarded young man who, in 1779, was
whipped for idleness. In response, he smashed two knitting
frames in his place of employment, a weave