In Part 1 of my conversation with Ben Tarnoff, co-founder of leading tech ethics publication Logic, we covered the history and philosophy of 19th century Luddites and how that relates to what he described in his column for The Guardian as today’s over-computerized world.
I’ve casually called myself a Luddite when expressing general frustration with social media or internet culture, but as it turns out, you can’t intelligently discuss what most people think of as an anti-technology movement without understanding the role of technology in capitalism, and vice versa.
At the end of Part 1, I was badgering Tarnoff to speculate on which technologies ought to be preserved even in a Luddite world, and which ones ought to go the way of the mills the original Luddites destroyed. Arguing for a more nuanced approach to the topic, Tarnoff offered the disability rights movement as an example of the approach he hopes will be taken by an emerging class of tech socialists.
TechCrunch: The Americans with Disability Act has been a very powerful body of legislation that has basically forced us to use our technological might to create physical infrastructure, including elevators, buses, vans, the day-to-day machinery of our lives that allow people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to go places, do things, see things, experience things, to do so. And you’re saying one of the things that we could look at is more technology for that sort of thing, right?
Because I think a lot about how in this society, every single one of us walks around with the insecurity that, “there but for the grace of my health go I.” At any moment I could be injured, I could get sick, I could acquire a disability that’s going to limit my participation in society.
Ben Tarnoff: One of the phrases of the disability rights movement is, “nothing about us without us,” which perfectly encapsulates a more democratic approach to technology. What they’re saying is that if you’re an architect, if you’re an urban planner, if you’re a shopkeeper, whatever it is, you’re making design decisions that have the potential to seriously negatively impact a substantial portion of the population. In substantial ways [you could] restrict their democratic rights. Their access to space.
