Today, no advancement in technology (save for cell phones, which are now facing widespread, warranted bans) has shred through the fabric of our classrooms like AI has. (source: Clayton Kistner, I am a proud Luddite in the Classroom)

As a long time ed tech advocate, comfortable with using technology since age 13 for my high school and college work extending into adulthood, it’s easy to see the impact in hindsight. For many, like the author of the blog post quote above, technology is a devil, stealing away the soul of learning in classrooms. Since technology costs money, it is ever the evil campaign of some capitalist bully selling a product that over-promises, under-delivers at an exorbitant expense.

Clayton’s words inspired the images in this blog post, featuring modern Luddites taking their digital hammers to Gen AI creations:

The Luddites banded together to quite literally destroy the technology that threatened their livelihoods, taking hammers (potential future tattoo idea for me) to the machinery itself while also vilifying the men responsible for these profit-seeking, job-destroying ventures.

A Recurring Theme

It seems to be a recurring theme among technology detractors, especially Gen AI resistors and self-styled haters, that technology harms the very act of human learning. To read their words, we are doomed to a future of meat men and women turned into automatons gleefully playing on their devices as the world burns (literally, climate change forced by huge, water-sucking, desert making data centers, making the world look like some Arizona apocalyptic landscape). Even as they write articles, subscribable Substacks, and books capturing their points of view, their biases, and facts, progress continues to advance.

Who should control technology and how should its benefits be distributed? That question lies at the heart of the debate, even as the Luddites movement ultimately failed. Schools are places of learning, only incidentally. They are, as many recognize, a marketplace for those who control the technology, those who sell services to help others adopt the technology, and the benefits increasingly get siphoned out to Big Tech and their cronies.

Resistance is futile, Clayton. We are caught in a cycle of adoption where concerns are raised, economic incentives override the concerns, the tech gets adopted/adapted/normalized, then regulations are passed to deal with symptomatic consequences. Before that process gets finished, a new innovation arrives, and the hype cycle begins again.

Here’s a rendition of modern Luddite facing off against the Big Tech Gen AI giants…