For many, it’s hard to imagine Sundays without a two-hour stint on the couch, surrounded by the detritus of the impossibly fat Sunday New York Times. ... There’s something to be said for rituals, and no good rituals involve staring at a twelve-inch screen.I’m sure you've seen a lot of articles like this. I have come to refer to the attitude expressed in them as “soft luddism.” Unlike the classical luddite, who rejects technology because of its role in commoditizing labor, the soft luddite is all too happy to enjoy the benefits of technological advances. He just won’t admit it.
Gosh, I can’t live without my email these days, but wouldn’t it be nice if people still wrote letters? Has anyone stopped to consider what we’ve lost?
Soft luddite commentary falls into two recognizable sub-genres. The first is the rant of the befuddled writer, at the mercy of his computer because he’s indignant that he should have to invest any significant amount of time in learning how to use it. The second, much more common, is a creepy fetishism for industrial-age technology: lots of loving odes to ink-stained fingers, loud machinery, and the smell of developer fluid, moments lost in time like tears in rain. Greenberger again:
It’s depressing to think that future generations of men won’t know the joy of discovering the sports section left behind in a bathroom stall.Yeah, isn’t it?
When I worked as a web producer at the Christian Science Monitor, most of our work consisted of converting material created “on the print side” for the web, and we were frequently made to run commentary pieces in the soft luddite spirit. The drumbeat of technophobic whining made me feel at times like the target of silent interdepartmental loathing.
Perhaps I’m naïve, but I doubt that was really the case. I knew that the editors were choosing pieces likely to appeal to the Monitor’s print subscribers, an aging demographic. And this was just prior to the industry-wide epiphany that brought web journalism to the forefront. At that time, it was still “The Newspaper,” not yet “the print product”—and the newsosaurs were confident that the web would remain forever marginal. Nowadays, as print budgets are being slashed and news companies are pouring money into web infrastructure, the hostility is more open, and in some cases becomes luddism of the good, old-fashioned, save-my-job-from-the-machines variety.
Of course, new technology shouldn’t always trump the old. Given an outcome we’re trying to reach, we should choose the technology which will help us reach it in the way that is most in line with our values. So the objection to the soft luddite is really an objection to nostalgia, a false consciousness that transforms the old and familiar into the natural and the good.
1 comment:
I have to agree with this fellow, but my luddism is of the good old-fashioned variety; if no longer for myself, I still carry it for my chums in the paper industry.
Some of the behavior scientists at Caltech have shown that there is a "spatial memory" associated with having a piece of print in your hands that currently isn't there for electronic media. Its easier for a lot of people (myself included) to recover your spot and concentration after a distraction in a good old-fashioned book.
I too have known the joy of sitting down with my Sunday paper - and it is more the ritual than the paper itself. It's a way to feel disconnected with the rest of the world while still remaining a part of it. With a laptop you're more likely to have instant messengers and email in the background, and that sense of relaxation just isn't there.
Besides, there's no real need for name-calling, is there?
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