AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
A modern Luddism might be expected to turn its targets towards AI, or the heavily monitored working conditions of people Below the API. Or of course to social media, whose harmful effects on the social fabric are now universally recognized.
That also I don't have any problem believing: I'm very fortunate to have a good job where I can largely manage my own time, but I think of those poor Below the API Amazon workers or Uber drivers, with their every instant tracked and subjected to judgement. They are truly being reduced to machinery, at some really deep level, and it's offensive. They are slaves of the clock and there needs to be a rebellion. (well today (April 1 2022)was a rare successful union vote of Amazon workers).
I don't know who first came up with this metaphor (maybe Replacing Middle Management with APIs by Peter Reinhardt), but it's a powerful idea for understanding society. It encodes the inherent dehumanization of technologized capital.
Below-the-API jobs are those where the computer is controlling a human, bascially using them as a component of a larger machine (Uber driver, Amazon warehouse worker are the canonical examples but many jobs have this aspect). Above-the-API is where the managers, owners, and designers of the machine operate.
I may be marinated in the values of MIT and Silicon Valley, but I still am 100% on the side of the real Luddites, who were not opposed to technology as such, but the use of technology to rob them of their livelihood and their agency. If I was an Amazon warehouse worker or Uber driver, I would be in rebellion against my masters and their machines and systems. I don't think I'd make a fine distinction between the digital technology, which is supposedly value-neutral, and the oppresive applications to which it is put.