Luddite
/ˈlʌdʌɪt
/noun
1A member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woollen mills, which they believed was threatening their jobs (1811–16).Beginning with the Luddites, who smashed machinery in British textile mills in the 1810s, she traces literary, artistic and philosophical expressions of antitechnological thought up to the present....
- One of the points he touched on was how the design of mill buildings changed with the advent of the Luddites and machine-wreckers of the early nineteenth century.
- The smashing of machinery, the so-called Luddite movement in which the struggles of the working class first were manifested, appeared initially in England in the 1770s.
1.1 derogatory A person opposed to increased industrialization or new technology: a small-minded Luddite resisting progress...
- This is a good class; it's team taught by a humanities Luddite and a technology-worshipping engineer.
- When people raise concerns about the headlong advance of science and technology they are inevitably ridiculed as Luddites who are trying to interfere with progress.
- However, here in North Yorkshire do we apply the Luddite mentality and return to the pitchfork and scythe?
Derivatives
Luddism
/ noun ...- And in that sense, it's Tolkien's Luddism that defines The Lord of the Rings as not allegorical but escapist, since it's an attempt to imagine England without the very things that made England possible.
- These days, Luddism has been re-branded as the embodiment of a backwards and foolish resistance to change, but with the proper context taken into account, the Luddites' cause looks quite noble.
- It is not Luddism or facile anti-capitalism that will protect us from the Big Brother of the future, but a ruthlessly critical attitude toward regulation, and a staunch defence of freedom.
Ludditism
- It's intellectual Ludditism of the most egregious kind.
- How do we distinguish between prudent concerns and those premised merely upon Ludditism and junk science?
- We will defend this humanistic approach from charges both of intellectual Ludditism and political conservatism.
Origin
Perhaps named after Ned Lud, a participant in the destruction of machinery, + -ite1.