It is understandable that people out of work or with little money will not surround themselves with all the newest technological toys like iPhones, NotePads, Kindles, your favorite music delivered intravenously, texting language outside of Merriam-Webster, video more real than your lying eyes show you, and too many products to make your life beyond anyone else's.
However, it is not just poor people. Small town people often breed small town minds. I used to think it was only seniors who were Luddites. It is not. I have neighbors in their fifties who don't have a computer in their house. People who have lots of discretionary funds have even given up television. There seems to be a hesitancy to find out what is going on in the world. Granted, TV is mind-boggling these days. Whoever is coming up with the programming apparently didn't make it out of kindergarten or may have joined the Rupert Murdoch Club to Dumb Down USA Citizens. Whichever, cable providers advertise hundreds of channels available for viewing. When people confined to wheelchairs, with little else to do with their senses and limbs, turn the TV off, someone ought to take notice.
I've noticed that when I turn off the cable box, it often turns itself back on. Now how can that happen if it does not happen by a flip of a wrist in Verizon Central?. It certainly makes this suspicious person wonder what statistics are getting padded. After all, advertisers need to see NUMBERS UP.
But, I digress. Recent research has shown brain differences in those who can accept change and those who are unable to do so. In 1996 a book was written by Kirkpatrick Sale. To read Sale's opinions, click here. It is an interview by David Kupfe; Rebel Against the Future. Sale offered the argument, "To believe that what has happened to humankind in the last 200 years is "progress" is to fall into an industrialist trap of: "Anything new is better and everything is better tomorrow than it is today because we have more material advantages and more ease and speed in our life and this is good."
The sad part of this is that people would suffer more painfully before death rather than benefiting, suffering less and living longer due to the modern 'miracles' that technology has brought to medicine. If corporations were less greedy, they would make more products in the U.S., put more Americans to work and help the economy rather than draining it for personal gain for the top few. When workers feared that machines would put them out of jobs, what happened?. When horses were replaced by cars, mechanics had work. How did this come about? People have to be educated. Companies that offer courses to train their employees to take on new tasks assure them continued mutual work benefit. Creativity can really only blossom by knowing how to make your ideas come to fruition. In the fifties, science fiction fed the scientists with ideas that only those from places like MIT, Cal Tech, and the like could turn into reality rather than fiction. No Luddites they!
To understand Ludism (also spelled Luddism) today, I found an interesting article.. Writing about the rise of computers and the Internet, it states: "The single most widespread sign of technological change in the last decade or so, the Internet, seems to provide novel opportunities rather than eliminating old trades. If anyone wanted to destroy the Internet in order to safeguard their own job, they would have to be a very skilled computer hacker with a lot of cunning, time and energy. Information technology is so entrenched in our civilization that attempts to wreck it would require almost biblical destruction. The Internet was built with resilience in mind" It touches the degree to which progress is held back by people who resist change and progress..Not all of them want the world to run as it was presumed to in the Holy Bible, either.
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