Rebels Against The Future The Luddites And Their War On The Industrial Revolution: Lessons For The Computer Age

Kirkpatrick Sale is at the tumultuous center of a technology backlash, actively challenging Bill Gates on the one hand and the Unabomber on the other. The subject of bets, barbs, and grudging praise in the pages ofWIRED, The New York Times, Newsweek,andThe New Yorker,Rebels Against the Futuretakes us back to the first technology backlash, the short-lived and fierce Luddite rebellion of 1811. Sale tells the compelling story of the Luddites' struggle to preserve their jobs and way of life by destroying the machines that threatened to replace them; he then invokes a new-Luddite spirit in response to today's technological revolution and calls for another sort of rebellion: not one of violence but rather of intellectually and ethically sound protest.

Kirkpatrick Sale is a contributing editor of The Nation and the author of many books, including Conquering Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy.