n The Making of the English Working Class , the leftwing historian EP Thompson made a point of challenging the condescension of history towards luddism, the original anti tech movement. The early 19th century croppers and weavers who rebelled against new technologies should not be written off as “blindly resisting machinery”, wrote Thompson in his classic history . They were opposing a laissez faire logic that dismissed its disastrous impact on their lives. A distinction worth bearing in mind
