Greetings. I’m Brian Merchant, the author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, the book this newsletter is named after. It’s about the Luddites’ deeply misunderstood uprising against the early tech titans, and why, in the age of big tech, gig apps, and AI, we should be thinking a lot harder about how technology is deployed—who it serves, and who it squeezes.
Since its themes continue to be relevant, and since social media is collapsing like a dying star, this is the newsletter I’ll use to share my work. It is 100% free — unless you’d like to kick me some support, which, thank you! — and will include essays, reporting, and rundowns of the latest news in AI, work, the widening resistance against big tech, plus book updates and whatever else seems fit to blog.
I hope you’ll join me — and hope to hear from you, too. If you, like most of us, have been caught up in big tech’s machine — whether that’s clocking shifts at an Amazon fulfillment center under a robotic work regime, hustling for UberEats’ always-changing algorithm, or losing creative jobs to ChatGPT — I want to hear your story. Drop me a line anytime. The Luddites are back.
This work is currently supported by the Omidyar Network, where I’m a reporter in residence.
