Bring Back the Luddites!
a technology that must be stopped
I’ve been wanting to get this stack out, ever since Rick Dyer sent me this note:
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/how-long-thing-roaming-around-exterminating-people
No more f****n' about. It's here. We're here.
There can be only one.
Rick is always a little cryptic with his last line. I’m a poor read-between-the-lineser, but I clicked the link, and saw what he was getting at. They are going to be in position to impose their terminal technocracy very soon if we don’t stand up and fight it. How will they do it? With weaponized robots and drones.
Montana tough guys! (and Wyoming and Idaho and Texas and Arkansas, etc.) it won’t matter any more if you think you’re gonna give the Feds the business when they come knocking on your door. Go ahead, put on that molon labe t-shirt and lock and load, they won’t care; the FBI agent may not want to venture down that dirt road with all the “POSTED…” signs along the way in McCone County, MT, but the drone and the robot will have no such disinclination. All the talk about 60 to 100 million Americans owning guns won’t mean much when it’s countered by unlimited millions of armed drones and robots.
So we have to take a page from the Luddite playbook and throw a shoe into the machine now. It was quaint on that Japan vacation when you went to the fast food place and got served by the cute robot, and saw more of them at the museum, zoo, airport and tourist information office, but that’s how it starts. A robot that can shake hands can also hold a stun gun, tear gas sprayer, sound cannon or worse.
As future dictator, I pardon you in advance, Biden-style, if you choose to take a Louisville Slugger to one of these robots, lethally equipped or not, when they make their debut in your neck of the woods. We have to stop them!
Here I make my case on the XC ski hill:
I'll use my trusty Red Rider and shoot their eye out!
Funny that you should mix the Luddites and throwing shoes into the machines. As far as I know, the Luddites existed primarily in England, protesting against the rise of machinery, especially in the weaving industry. The word "sabotage" arose from the French word "sabot", which meant a shoe made from wood and which was actually thrown into the gears of the machinery to cause a breakdown of production.
Probably there were Luddites in France. Probably there were Englishmen who used hard items to break machines. If so, this would be one of the few historical instances in which the English and the French worked together for a perceived (mistaken, in my view) good.
Whether robots and Boston Dynamic dogs will ever evolve into Skynet remains to be seen. However, just as with Ludditism, this may be seen as an existential threat without ever becoming one.
I hear you. I am skeptical.