luddite websites

[Otto]

Both luddite websites I had in my collection seem to have gone:

Luddites Online - Bringing Tomorrow's Yesterday Today - "Life was better
before sliced bread."
http://www.antecode.com/luddites/index2.html
has entirely gone.

The Luddite Reader - "TLR...is the website for the technology dysphoric,
phobic, paranoiac, and the merely cranky. It features selected books, films,
music, and other resources for folks who would like to turn their backs on
technology, if only they could be sure that it would not sneak up on them
so."
http://www.ludditereader.com/
has changed into something I would not have expected.

Try these instead:

Why the future doesn't need us.
"Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic
engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered
species. (...) THE NEW LUDDITE CHALLENGE

First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing
intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do
them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly
organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either
of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of
their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the
machines might be retained.

If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make
any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how
such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human
race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the
human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the
machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would
voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would
willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might
easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the
machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the
machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more
and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will
let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because
machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones.
Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep
the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of
making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective
control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they
will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide."
By Bill Joy
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html

In Defence of Luddism - By T.J. Snaith, I-Resign.Com.
http://www.i-resign.com/uk/workinglife/viewarticle_26.asp

 r h e t o r i c . a n d . i t s . c o n s e q u e n c e s
When the Unabomber speaks. By David Futrelle. This article originally
appeared in slightly different form in the September 22, 1995 issue of the
Chicago Reader, 11 East Illinois, Chicago IL 60611
http://www.well.com/user/futrelle/unabom.html

Otto