Workers striking today can trace the essence of their dispute back to the industrial revolution Sebastian Willnow/dpa/Alamy
Blood in the Machine
Brian Merchant (Little Brown)
NOBODY likes being described as someone who mindlessly opposes technology and is doomed to irrelevance. So imagine how the Luddites would feel knowing their name has been smeared with that meaning over the past 200 years.
The Luddite movement, which challenged factory automation in England at the start of the industrial revolution, was far more reasonable and complex than the bogeyman conjured up by governments and businesses, writes …
