Show threadbsmall2Dec 23
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> .. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelus_Novus
#WalterBenjamin with #PaulKlee (and Hannah Arendt...) on
#ProgressIsALie gets me thinking of #ProgressWithoutPeople , David Noble, Malm, Tokar
Angelus Novus - Wikipedia

bsmall2Mar 27, 2025
> [Progress Without People by David Noble]... with a foreword by Stan Weir. β€œToday, when respectable discourse still requires euphemistic substitutes for β€˜capitalism’, it is difficult to remember that this term was itself a euphemism of sorts, a polite and dignified substitute for greed, extortion, coercion, domination, exploitation, plunder, war, and a murder.
https://resources.platform.coop/resources/progress-without-people-new-technology-unemployment-and-the-message-of-resistance/
#StanWeir #DavidNoble #ProgressWithoutPeople #Capitalism #CapitalismAsEuphemism
Progress Without People: New Technology, Unemployment, and the Message of Resistance – Platform Cooperativism Resource Library

Show threadbsmall2Feb 27, 2025

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> ... the universities are not simply undergoing a technological transformation. Beneath that change, and camouflaged by it, lies another: the commercialization of higher education. For here as elsewhere technology is buta vehicle and a disarming disguise.

#DavidNoble of #ProgressWithoutPeople fame on
#TechnologyAsADisguise
@bsmall2

Show threadbs2Feb 27, 2025
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> Those engines of mischief were sentenced to die
By unanimous vote of the trade
And Ludd who can all opposition defy
Was the grand executioner made
> And when in the work he destruction employs
Himself to no method confines
By fire and by water he gets them destroyed
For the elements aid his designs
https://genius.com/Chumbawamba-the-triumph-of-general-ludd-lyrics
#CultOfInformation #Technopoly #MonkeyWrenchGang #ProgressWithoutPeople
@bsmall2
bs2Oct 27, 2023

> They did not believe in technological progress nor could they have: the alien idea was invented after them, to try and prevent their recurrence. In light of this invention[ideology/world view], the Luddites were cast as irrational, provincial, futile, and primitive...[They] were perhaps the last people in the West to perceive technology in the present tense, and to act upon that perception.

p. 4 #ProgressWithoutPeople #DavidNoble #Technology #Progress #SandInTheWheels #TheWellSweep

bs2Oct 27, 2023
> Unencumbered by any alien and paralysing notion of of technological progress, they simply tried to arrest this assault upon their lives in any way they could. The had nothing against machinery, but they had no undue respect for it either. When choosing between machines and people.. between the capitalist's machines and their own lives, they had little problem deciding which came first --- p. 5 #ProgressWithoutPeople #DavidNoble #Technology #Progress
Show threadbs2Oct 27, 2023
For the the dehumanizing power loom
(the advantage was not "reduced cost of production" but "more immediate control and management and prevention of embezzlement")
J.H. Sadler proposed and alternative, a "pendulum hand-loom on behalf of the weavers. It was designed to preserve the skills and jobs of the weavers and enable them to avoid the degrading conditions of factory life." p.6 of #ProgressWithoutPeople by #DavidNoble with #MaxineBerg make me see Scheme programming over #OfficeSoftware
bs2Oct 27, 2023
> ... the weavers raised "a powerful and impressive critique of machinery, a critique that carried a genuine belief that technical change was not a 'given' but could be tempered and directed to match social ideals." They... consistently... demanded a social policy on technology. (They proposed, for example, a tax on power looms and a host of other legislative measures to protect the lives of weavers.)
#MaxineBerg on p.6 of #ProgressWithoutPeople by #DavidNoble on #TheMachine #Technology
bs2Dec 9, 2021

AI is Progress,
Progess is A LIe.

See #DavidNoble #ProgressWithoutPeople

There is always someone making decisions and choices somewhere, the magic words like progress, 'invisible hand' ( #EKHunt is more accurate with 'inivisibl foot', See #MichaelAlbert and #RobinHahnel's #QuietRevolutioninWelfareEconomics ), 'free markets' just hide the responsibility.