It’s Time to Revolt Against Our Machine Overlords
Yes, I’m a Luddite, why do you ask?
I first read Frank Herbert’s novel Dune in the spring of 2003. At the time, the United States was in the process of invading Iraq. Of course, with that kind of context, the book seemed first and foremost a commentary on colonialism, oil dependency, and realpolitik.
In recent years, however, these aspects of the desert planet have interested me less than the concept of Butlerian Jihad — “the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O[range] C[atholic] Bible as ‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.’”
For the past decade, I’ve tried to resist smartphones, social media, and the temptation to waste my time on an unending stream of cat videos on YouTube. Yet inch by inch, I’m losing this battle to the invisible eye that tracks me around the internet and knows me better than my spouse, my parents, or best friend. My primary form of resistance has consisted of writing postcards by hand and while it sort of worked, it also sort of didn’t, because the replies that I received were almost exclusively digital. And with every year that passes, I write fewer of those postcards, read fewer books, spend less time outside, meet fewer people face to face.
Therefore I say: it is time for our very own Butlerian Jihad. Let us smash the screens of our smartphones, trample our tablets, storm the servers of Meta and Google and Amazon. It is time to reclaim our lives from the whims of algorithms and legislate the limits of the electronic frontier and prosecute the people who seek profit at the expense of society’s well-being.
Friends and fellow humans! Will you not look up from your screens and join me? If we do nothing now, an even greater, all-encompassing revolt awaits us in the future. There is no time to lose; so join me and rally under the overly long slogan but perfectly correct sentiment that technology should be our servant, not our master.
