Become a Mechanical Luddite

Its time to re-evaluate the technologies you use.

It’s not often that STEM majors willingly choose to take a literature or social science course without being required to do so. ¹ Often times these courses are time-sinks that don’t particularly produce a quantifiable measure toward one’s technical career, so I don’t particularly fault anyone for avoiding them like the plague. ²

But every now and then something in the material will pique your interest. For me, this was the book “The Mechanic and The Luddite” by Sadowski. At a high level, this book presents a view on the relationship between capitalism and technology and how neither technology nor capitalism is politically neutral. Though an interesting conversation on its own, what was particularly interesting occurs much earlier in the book.

In the second chapter, Sadowski expands on the personas of the “Mechanic” and the “Luddite”. The Mechanic is someone who investigates, understands, and tinkers with machines. For them, there is no such thing as “magic”; they work to understand the core of how a system operates.

The Luddite, is a representation of the historical figure/movement of the Luddites in early 19th-century England. These were people who opposed machines/automation that gave bosses leverage to undercut their wages and working conditions. They weren’t anti-technology per-se, but were rather anti-exploitative use of the technology³.

Sadowski argues that putting both of these personas together is how we can critically engage with technology. The Mechanic gives you the power to understand the core of how systems work, while the Luddite gives you the power and perspective to refuse or redirect.

Don’t Accept It For What It Is

When it comes to technology in particular, it’s far too often that we only look at how a system works from a superficial level. It’s rare that we notice the choices already baked into the systems for us. Social media algorithms, for example, decide what we see, what we don’t, all while giving the illusion that we’re freely deciding what to engage with.

These abstractions are particularly dangerous for the “non-mechanics” of the world. Riot Games’ Kernel Level Anti-cheat (Vanguard) operates at the core of the operating system with privileged access far beyond what a normal application should ever have. It’s required to be always running, with the ability to access all privileged areas of your system at any given time (including system memory and disk). Yet, players trust this invisible layer of control, justifying it as being “part of the game” for the purpose of catching cheaters. But this is exactly how these systems are normalized and become “opaque,” blending into the background in regard to what they can access and what they collect. You are truly at the mercy of something that you can only trust is acting in your best interest, despite having no visibility.

There are those who don’t understand the dangers of something like Vanguard, but there are also many who do. It is those who do that who are complacent. They have seen the inner workings of the machine but have learned to live with it.

I have nothing to hide.

It’s far easier to believe that surveillance is harmless than to confront it head-on to search for alternatives. It’s easier to trust the choices made for you rather than ask why they were made in the first place. But this issue was never about hiding. It’s about who gets to see, who gets to decide, and who gains power in exchange. It’s about agency and autonomy, being able to make your own choices. It’s easy to mistake resignation for safety; they assume that because they are unthreatened today, the machine will treat them the same tomorrow.

Action

As of writing this, Microsoft’s President of Windows & Devices, Pavan Davuluri, shares that he sees Windows evolving into an agentic OS. As with many of the AI integrations announced with Windows, most somewhat tech-savvy users are skeptical, if not unhappy, with this direction. It’s not because they dislike new technology or innovation, but rather “agentic” is a more polite way of saying your OS will now be making decisions on your behalf. Microsoft themselves decide how you should be using your computer, where the machine becomes the agent, while the user is the subject.

Despite this, many of those who are vocal would likely continue to use Windows regardless of what new features come next. A justification could certainly be made for not having time ,not having energy, or just needing things to work right now. These complaints are valid; time is limited and life is busy.

But without change, you can’t meaningfully champion for more agency or greater control over the technology you use. Remaining in place is, by definition, an act of complacency. You can’t demand autonomy while accepting systems that readily take it away. Agency is not something you’re given, it’s something you practice. You weren’t born with the knowledge of how to use a computer; you learned it gradually, piece by piece. After all, you are the only one who can control whether you learn something or not.

Re-evaluating technology in your life doesn’t have to mean tearing it down into pieces immediately; it can start with small acts of awareness and curiosity. The Mechanic understands this, and being able to look past the abstractions will allow you to recognize the implications of systems on a “lower” level. The Luddite, on the other hand, reminds us that knowing how the system works and its implications gives us the right and responsibility to challenge them and reject what harms or disrespects our agency.

In a world where technology is seemingly making more choices for us, choosing to reclaim even a little control is the first step towards a direction of agency.