Assessing Modernity's Malaise

As anyone living today knows, the Luddites were fighting a losing battle. Though they broke stocking frames, burned factories, and killed mill owners, their efforts to stymie the rise of new cost-reducing machines could not compete with the power of the British state. Their legendary leader, Ned Ludd, inspired disgruntled craftsmen and terrified the authorities like a nineteenth-century Robin Hood. Yet the long processes of enclosure, technological innovation, and global expansion would nonetheless bring mass urbanization, the destruction of local cultures, and the rise of the technologically driven society we inhabit today.