Greetings all,
Hope everyone’s hanging in there. Another week, another slipslide into fascism. The Kirk killing has, as many anticipated, served as a pretext for the Trump administration and its allies to begin a concerted attack on their critics and opposition. Trump designated ‘Antifa’ as a terrorist group, despite “anti-fascism” being an ideology, not an organization. Brendan Carr, Trump’s FCC chair, pressured Disney into sacking Jimmy Kimmel; its executive leadership immediately complied. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s X continues to serve as a megaphone for supporters of the above campaign and for calls for violence against trans people and the left.
No wonder the kids want to pull the plug. After all, if there’s hope to be found in this moment, it will be found in solidarity, in organizing, and in refusal of a world dictated by authoritarians and tech oligarchs. Which is why I’m especially pleased to report that we’re beginning to see what’s shaping up to be a genuine, youth-led, modern-day Luddite uprising.
A loose constellation of grassroots collectives, orgs, and clubs, ranging from New York’s Luddite Club to Silicon Valley’s APPstinence, has gotten together and dubbed this fall the “Luddite Renaissance.” Students, activists, tech whistleblowers, and self-proclaimed Luddites have been undertaking a series of actions, readings, and protests that will culminate next weekend, on September 27, at what they’re calling the S.H.I.T.P.H.O.N.E. (Scathing Hatred of Information Technology and the Passionate Hemorrhaging of Our Neo-liberal Experience) rally at the High Line in New York City. I would love to be there, but alas it’s on the wrong coast. (If you can make it to Manhattan that day, I’m very jealous; drop a line and let me know how it went.)
But it’s not just the Luddite Club and the S.H.I.T.P.H.O.N.E.rs, either. It seems that since last year, when I wrote about the New Luddites rising up to resist and refuse AI, from anti-gen AI creatives to Waymo combatants to gig workers fighting Uber, this loosest of movements has only broadened. Anger at AI, smartphones, and social media—and more specifically, at the exploitative practices of the companies operating them—has galvanized people all over the world, from the youth above, to artists and advocates and academics.
Cognitive scientists, university professors and teachers are taking a harder line against generative AI in schools. Mutual aid and political action groups like Stop Gen AI have formed to support workers impacted by management embracing AI. Numerous groups, led by the AI Now Institute, are working towards a People’s AI Action Plan.
And “Luddite” is, increasingly, shedding its status as a derogatory epithet and instead is being worn like a badge of honor by the counterculture; by activists; by those who reject a future saturated by Silicon Valley’s automated slop and choked by its concentrated power.
To wit: Also on September 27th, a Luddite-themed event called “Breaking the (G)loom” (described as “an evening of fellowship for the AI avoidant”) is taking place in London, at SET Social. (I’ll include more details below.) And then, on top of that there’s a full-blown Luddite conference being put on at Columbia University, called “New Luddism: Technology and Resistance in the Modern Workplace.”
This one-day event will bring together some of the very best Luddite thinkers in academia and organizers tackling tech in the work place. Also, I’ll be there. Come check it out, it’s open to all, I think, but registration is limited. There will be a happy hour or some other kind of public event in the evening as well, I’m told, so stay tuned.
All this machine-breaking action has got me thinking I should try to organize something closer to home, in LA or thereabouts, maybe bring back the Luddite Tribunal. We’ll see, we’ll see.
For all those interested, here are more details on the New York Luddite Renaissance action, passed along to me by one of the anonymous organizers:
Brooklyn, NY - September 4, 2025 - Exactly one hundred years ago, the Harlem Renaissance emerged to lift the voices of African-Americans out of the silence of the stifling dominant culture. Today, a Gen Z backlash against the suffocation of online existence is coalescing into a sort of new “Luddite Renaissance.” These young people feel that their voices — and those of all living, human beings — have been intolerably silenced and exploited by Silicon Valley, only to be replaced by robots and AI.
These kids have put together an ongoing calendar of events called “Real People in Real Time” and encourage the “Ludd-curious” to join in. The events celebrate all that is uniquely human: authenticity, empathy, play, love, sensuality, dance, joy, art, music, community and respect for the natural world. Also included are events that push back on techno-supremacy, and workshops that show the path back into embodied existence.
Youth groups which began on their own in New York, Florida, Colorado, California, Ohio, and DC, have now linked up to share stories, solidarity, and events. So far, they include the School of Radical Attention (Brooklyn), Ziggurat (Denver), APPstinence (Silicon Valley), FREE POPS (Manhattan), Reconnect (Orlando), The Lamp Club (Manhattan), The Luddite Club (Oberlin and Brooklyn), The Anxious Generation (Brooklyn), Design It for Us (DC), and the LOG OFF Movement (national). And the list is growing.
They say that they are building a way of living that is an alternative to the unnatural digital existence that has been pushed and normalized by corporate powers. Many of these young people entered the movement in search of a solution to the epidemic of alienation plaguing their generation. Record-breaking levels of Gen Z depression have been well documented, as researched by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of the bestselling book, The Anxious Generation.
As the kids have shared and delved deeper into the topic of digital culture, they’ve learned about the perilous waters we’ve entered as a civilization: how AI has robbed them of entry-level jobs; how data centers are devouring farmlands, energy and our last fresh water supplies; how algorithms are deliberately designed to addict them to their devices and atrophy their attention spans; how Silicon Valley “fracks” their behavior and sells the data to brokers; how Palantir Corporation controls all the private data held by the federal government of every U.S. citizen; how ICE uses Palantir algorithms to track (and terrorize) alleged “aliens”; and how techno-utopianism has steadily been fostering the acceleration of inequity for the past three decades.
They believe that their Luddism has been a healthy response to the litany of glaring abuses of technology.
Most of the events take place in New York City, which is no surprise, since it is one of the last municipalities in the U.S. where street life is still widely vibrant, not having been replaced by soulless digital facsimiles. In New York, revelers still populate the brick-and-mortar world, spilling out of cafes, performance spaces, galleries, bookstores, and public spaces.
On September 27, the S.H.I.T.P.H.O.N.E. rally and march will begin at 3pm sharp on The High Line in Manhattan, between W. 12th and W. 13th Sts. S.H.I.T.P.H.O.N.E. stands for Scathing Hatred of Information Technology and the Passionate Hemorrhaging of Our Neo-liberal Experience. Hundreds are expected to take part in this carnivalesque collective grievance against technocracy. Soapboxes will be made available for people to take turns voicing their screeds against Big Tech. There will be surprise guest speakers, gnomes, chanting, bullhorns, song, a vigil for boredom, and last, but not least — tech smashing! Come join the parade!
Sept. 28 | Reconnect Field Day @ 11 a.m., Prospect Park near Garfield Pl.
Stow your phone in a locker and spend the day competing outdoors in a mix of classic field-day events and other activities—from dodgeball and tug-of-war to wheelbarrow and relay races. Come for a few events, or stay the whole time—there will be plenty of prizes to go around. Bring some friends, but be ready to make new ones, too: teams will be made up on the spot.
Oct. 4 | Ziggurat Surveillance Tech Teach-In @ 3 p.m., Brooklyn
Join Ziggurat for a discussion on surveillance capitalism—the multi-trillion dollar business model that turns your daily digital life into profit for tech giants. We'll explore how companies like Google and Facebook do more than just collect your data. They are essentially selling access to your mind to advertisers (and far worse). They frack your data to predict and influence your future behavior, and even to influence elections. Through interactive demonstrations with your own devices, you'll discover the surveillance tech already embedded in your daily routine and understand why you're not the customer of “free” services—you're the product being sold.
Email hi@zig.art for a spot.
All events are always free and open to everyone. All generations are welcome!
And more details on Breaking the (G)loom in London are here:
Date: 27th September
Time: 2pm to 5pm
Location: SET Social, Red BarThis event is free, but ticketed!
Please register at: lu.ma/9ddl2shiSick of living in the dreams of prepper CEOs?
Feeling doomy about spending the next AI winter in a chatbot cult?
Suspicious that the healthcare implications of AlphaFold might be overshadowed by the broader corrosion of liberal democracy?
Actually pretty optimistic, but would like a break from the hype?Many art & technology meetups have an uncritical undertone. This one is politely opinionated.
This means: any presented work must be entirely made without AI, unless AI is used to critique itself (efficacy, power consumption, safety e.t.c).
This does not mean: being rude, patronising, or elitist towards the AI powerusers among us.
All are welcome. Luddites & cyberwitches are actively encouraged.🪻
There will be talks: open-projector style. 1-10 minutes each.
There will be breaks: with time to exchange details, ask questions, introduce yourself to that cool person across the room with the T-shirt of that band you adore.Some talk prompts for your organic intelligence:
A project you want to share.
A story you want to tell.
A future you want to conjure.
If you are wondering if your talk idea is good - yes it is great!!
Say hi at: contact(at)breakingthegloom(dot)com
There’s lots, still, to fight of course. In that vein, some good things I’ve been reading, to cap us off here:
Hundreds of Google AI Workers Were Fired Amid Fight Over Working Conditions. “Over 200 contractors who work on improving Google’s AI products, including Gemini and AI Overviews, have been laid off, WIRED reports. “It’s the latest development in a conflict over pay and alleged poor working conditions.”
The UC Berkeley Labor Center has a new report analyzing how labor groups are addressing and engaging AI.
John Herrman on what ChatGPT has become (“Less synthetic brain, more replacement for the whole internet”) in New York Mag: “The picture that emerges from this data matches this thesis pretty closely: ChatGPT, for many of its users, is a way to access, remix, summarize, retrieve, and sometimes reproduce information and ideas that already exist in the world; in other words, they use this one tool much in the way that they previously engaged with the entire web — arguably the last great “cultural and social technology” — and through a similar routine of constant requests, consultations, and diversions. One doesn’t get the feeling from this research that we’re careening toward uncontrollable superintelligence, or even imminent invasion of the workforce by agentic AI bots, but it does suggest users are more than comfortable replacing and extending many of their current online interactions — searching, browsing, and consulting with the ideas of others — with an ingratiating chatbot simulation.
Molly White on the wildly ballooning world of prediction markets, in her newsletter, Citation Needed: “With prediction markets already handling billions of dollars in trades and more platforms launching every month, regulators need to grapple with these questions before the industry grows too big to effectively control. The cryptocurrency industry has shown how difficult it becomes to implement meaningful oversight once a poorly regulated industry accumulates enough money and political influence to push back — and the devastating cost to everyday people who get caught in the fallout.”
- on the origins of the Butlerian Jihad, the anti-machine uprising foundational to the lore of Frank Herbert’s Dune books:
That’s it for now. Next week we’ll take a look at the spate of AI bills that recently passed California’s state legislature, and that now await their fate on Gavin Newsom’s desk. There’s much to get into, as California’s the best hope for strong AI regulation, yet the governor’s political aspirations will keep him cozy with Silicon Valley. Anyway, much to discuss.
As always, many thanks for reading, and one last quick entreaty that if you’ve made it this far, perhaps this work has some value for you, and you might consider supporting it with a yearly or monthly subscription. Writing this thing takes many hours a week—these days, with, you know, everything going on, I sink many more than 40 hours into BITM and related projects like AI Killed My Job. (This week, we heard from visual artists.) Your support helps ensure I can keep doing this work, and continuing to cover tech from the perspective of we humans, the people Silicon Valley is happening to.
Until next time, down with all kings but King Ludd.
Thank you! Ah, how desperately we need good news this week, and this evidence of a real Luddite rebellion led by youth is WONDERFUL news! But it comes none too soon--the techlords and their fascist allies are frantically pushing data centers everywhere, and with King Donald in power, they're getting away with all sorts of corner-cutting. Here in rural West Virginia, no one's talking much about lost jobs or alienation, but the politicians, all of them Republicans, have already passed a bill taking away any say re data centers from counties and cities--and the governor just said he hopes to see WV triple the power it exports, from gas and coal, to feed data centers. You might want to do a column on the battle in Memphis over the huge data center Musk's XAI is building near a black community, ignoring permits and with no public input.
Great info! We've been indoctrinated into the Cult of the Shiny Thing by the technocracy and it's time to break out. The fact that tech billionaires are a thing now is a giant tell. Unfettered capitalism + unregulated technology = human farming for profit.