Luddite (pronounced luhd-ahyt)
(1) A
member of any of various bands of workers in England (1811–1816) organized to
destroy manufacturing machinery, under the belief that its use diminished
employment.
(2) Someone
opposed or resistant to new technologies or technological change.
(3) Of
or relating to the Luddites
1805–1815:
Said to be named after a Mr Ned Ludd, a Leicestershire worker who in the late
eighteenth century, a fit of rage destroyed mechanical knitting machines he
believed were threatening his livelihood by displacing him from his job. There is doubt (1) whether there was an actual
mill worker called Ned Ludd and (2) whether the famous act of industrial sabotage
really happened in the circumstances described.
The origin of the name Ludd can be traced to the ancient Anglo-Saxon
tribes of the British Isles and was occupational, used by those employed as
pages or servants, the Old English Ladde a term which described a household servant.
That’s generally accepted among genealogists
but there are sources which note that in the Old English and Scotch, the word lade
meant “a canal or duct for water” and that Ludd evolved as a geographical name,
used to describe one who worked near or lived on the banks of a waterway. It’s entirely possible the two forms evolved
separately and while the name was probably in use earlier, the first traces of
it in the parish records of England appear circa 1100 variously as Ladda, Ladde,
le Ladd, Ludd & Ludde. Variations in
spelling were common and it wasn’t until the late Middle English that a
widespread standardization can be said to have begun and because elements of Greek,
the various flavours of Latin, French and Germanic languages mixed with the native
tongues of the British Isles, the influences were many, the differences in pronunciation
accounting for at least some of the variations.
Related to what would become the lineage of Ludd included Ladd, Ladde,
Laddey, Ladds, Lade, Ladey, Laddy and others.
The -ite suffix was from the French -ite,
from the Old French, from the Latin -ītēs,
from the Ancient Greek -ῑ́της (-ī́tēs). It had a wide application including (1) the
formation of nouns denoting the followers or adherents of a individual,
doctrine or movement etc, (2) the formation of nouns denoting descendants of a
certain historic (real or mythical) figure (widely used of biblical
identities), (3) the formations of demonyms, (4) in geology the formation of
nouns denoting rocks or minerals, (5) in archeology, the formation of nouns
denoting fossil organisms, (6) in biology & pathology to form nouns
denoting segments or components of the body or an organ of the body, (7) in
industry & commerce to form nouns denoting the product of a specified
process or manufactured product & (8) in chemistry to form names of certain
chemical compounds (historically especially salts or esters of acids with names
with the suffix –ous). Luddite &
Ludditism are nouns; the noun plural is Luddites.
The Luddites
were a social movement of textile workers in England during the early nineteenth
century who protested against the introduction into factories of machinery, their
concern being their jobs would be lost and they and their families would face destitution
because they would be forced into manual labor at a very low rate of pay. Real though the movement was, there is no
documentary evidence to support the suggestion a Mr Ned Ludd was a real figure
associated with the Luddites and the English parish records of the era are comprehensive
and regarded as accurate. Historians
have trawled through the ledgers covering the relevant decades and have been
unable to verify that a Mr Ned Ludd was ever employed in the factories. The consensus is that the identity of Ned
Ludd was a construct with which the cause of the workers could be identified
although whether the name emerged organically from the movement or was created
by a writer as a narrative device is unknown.
Lindsay Lohan with sledge-hammer demonstrating a Luddite technique by attacking Volvo. This wasn’t an industrial protest and was actually an event staged to protest about the cancellation of a television show. Actually, a sledge-hammer or some other suitable tool may have been what the Luddites used for their sabotage. English picked up sabotage from the French saboter (deliberately to damage, wreck or botch), used originally to refer to the tactic used in industrial disputes by workers wearing the wooden shoes called sabots who disrupted production in various ways. The persistent myth is that the origin of the term lies in the practice of workers throwing the wooden sabots into factory machinery to interrupt production but the tale appears apocryphal, one account even suggesting sabot-clad workers were simply considered less productive than others who had switched to leather shoes, roughly equating the term sabotage with inefficiency.
Even
the extent to which weavers (and other factory workers) actually sabotaged
machines in the manner of the legendary of Ned Ludd is unclear and while it
clear from the reports of the time there were instances of sabotage, it does
appear they were sporadic and opportunistic acts and certainly not part of a
planned movement, much less a revolutionary one. However, the term has endured to be applied
broadly to encompass anyone who opposes new technology or social change and it’s
now rarely used with any hit the recipient is contemplating violent resistance.
In this sense, the term is often used in
a pejorative way to describe individuals or groups who are seen as reactionary
or obstructionist. Ludditism can exist
even at high technological levels, some users accustomed to the familiarity of certain
apps or operating systems resistant to change, usually on the basis that the
change offers no benefits and sometimes even brings disadvantages.
No comments:
Post a Comment