“Blood in the Machine” – the book – by Brian Merchant, is crazy! I am only some 100 pages in to it so far, but it is so shocking and eye opening. I never knew this was what the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution was like. I never know this was what the Luddite movement was about. And worse, as Mark Twain said (a quote I found in this book) “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme” – so true! Everything I am reading there rhymes so much with what is happening nowadays with AI and the gig economy. Wow!
I always thought a luddite was someone who hated technology, or who couldn’t understand new technology and refused to change with the times. That’s how I always used the term. But while reading this book I realized how wrong I was. Luddites weren’t against technology, they just were against technology that made it worse for humans. The same way one could feel about AI or any other technology – I am not against AI, for instance, when Copilot summarizes a Teams meeting so I don’t have to watch the whole thing but can quickly understand what happened – but I am against AI when it is presented as something that can replace humans or the work they do (write code, design images, write legal opinions, replace customer support). And back then and now, the issue was one of policy and greed – what the Luddites were against was how the factory owners were using these machines to get rich by stealing the work/ profits of the workers. The workers took pride in their work and were happy to work for a fair price, it was only when factory owners wanted to replace the workers with machines because that way they could sell things for cheap and eliminate dealing with workers, that they started smashing machines! It’s so crazy how so much of that resonates with what’s happening in the world today.
Worse, machines had the quality worse in a lot of cases, but that was fine coz the price is what mattered.
On the policy front it was the wars England was fighting with France that brought down the market (less demand for the goods), giving factory owners all the more reason to push for machines as they can lower costs and not deal with workers. So many themes that rhyme between then and now!
And all this is from just the first 100 pages or so. Madness. I never ever thought about the Industrial Revolution this way. You visit a museum and all everyone ever talks about is how the Industrial Revolution paved the way for progress and made our lives better etc.; which, no doubt, it did, but there was a huge price to pay for it and that was only paid by the workers.
I knew from English studies at school where we had to read Charles Dickens on how children worked in these factories and things were tough. But again, that was just a “story”. In this book though, there’s a lot more on how such children were mistreated, and why children were used in the first place. Factory owners didn’t need workers to run the machines, children were ideal coz they didn’t cost most, were more pliable, and you don’t really need much skills to operate the machines (as opposed to the cotton weavers and others). And just like you hear of inhuman working conditions at factories in China, that’s pretty much how these factories were back then for kids. Crazy! “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme”
A rank of precarious, angry, and impoverished workers rapidly growing across the country; new forms of technology, control, and production bringing advantages to a few at the expense of the many; a detached, vain, and despised leader at the helm: the comet had dimmed for the summer, but it was about to burn brighter than ever.
A must-read!
For anyone interested, the author Brian Merchant also has a newsletter + podcast of the same name. That’s how I came across the book.