The dictionary definition of "Luddite" broadly refers to "one who is opposed to especially technological change." Although the dictionary also mentions that Luddites were a real 19th Century movement, this is not the main way in which people use the term. If a person is a Luddite in the modern age, that supposedly means they are a hard-headed reactionary irrationally frightened by technology. While the rest of the world enjoys computers, smart phones, televisions and the other benefits of technological progress, the Luddite is stereotyped as a grouchy stick in the mud, equivalent to someone's grandpa complaining about TikTok and kids these days.
Yet who were those real-life 19th Century Luddites? It turns out, they weren't fatuous technophobes, as the pejorative insult "Luddite" would lead us to believe, but keen observers of the labor trends of their time, which has interesting implications for our current moment of ChatGPT bots that can write complex prose with the push of a button and artificial intelligence (AI) being injected into everything possible, often with mixed results.
