Interview with the Luddite: Kirkpatrick Sale is a Leader of the Neo-Luddites. Wire’s Kevin Kelly Wrote the Book on Neo-Biological Technology. Food Fight, Anyone?

History is full of civilizations that have collapsed, followed by people who have had other ways of living. My optimism is based on the certainty that this civilization will collapse … You can measure it in three ways. The first would be an economic collapse … Second would [when] the poor, who comprise, let’s say, a fifth of society, are no longer content to be bought off with alcohol and television and drugs, and rises up in rebellion. And at the same time, there would be the same kind of distention within nations, in which the poor nations are no longer content to take the crumbs from our table … The third is accumulating environmental problems, such that Australia, for example, becomes unlivable because of the ozone hole there.

Interview with the Luddite: Kirkpatrick Sale is a Leader of the Neo-Luddites. Wire’s Kevin Kelly Wrote the Book on Neo-Biological Technology. Food Fight, Anyone?

How are we going use the computer?! What do you use that technology for?! Here’s how: it’s going to be used for the dominance and exploitation of nature for our benefit … I’m not asking you to worship nature. I’m asking for a regard for nature.

Interview with the Luddite: Kirkpatrick Sale is a Leader of the Neo-Luddites. Wire’s Kevin Kelly Wrote the Book on Neo-Biological Technology. Food Fight, Anyone?

Newsweek magazine’s recent issue on technomania says: “The revolution is only just begun. It’s already starting to overwhelm us, outstripping our capacity to cope, antiquating our laws, transforming our mores, reshuffling our economy, reordering our priorities, redefining our workplaces, putting our Constitution to the fire, shifting our concept of reality.” I think that anything that is doing that to us is something that ought to be resisted … Until we change our minds, how are we going to change our technologies?

Interview with the Luddite: Kirkpatrick Sale is a Leader of the Neo-Luddites. Wire’s Kevin Kelly Wrote the Book on Neo-Biological Technology. Food Fight, Anyone?

I urge people to take a clear-headed look at what is in front of them, and not to feel guilty if they reject something, and to be able to say, with a rational explanation, This is wrong, I will not myself buy into it … There are two moral judgments against computers. One is that computerization enables the large forces of our civilization to operate more swiftly and efficiently in their pernicious goals of making money and producing things … And secondly, in the course of using these, these forces are destroying nature with more speed and efficiency than ever before.

Interview with the Luddite: Kirkpatrick Sale is a Leader of the Neo-Luddites. Wire’s Kevin Kelly Wrote the Book on Neo-Biological Technology. Food Fight, Anyone?

This technology … is designed precisely to create a uniformity of production, consumption, distribution – distribution of money or ideas or so-called information. If within it you can find these nuggets of the contrary, that doesn’t change the overall nature of the industrial mechanism or the industrial civilization behind it.

Interview with the Luddite: Kirkpatrick Sale is a Leader of the Neo-Luddites. Wire’s Kevin Kelly Wrote the Book on Neo-Biological Technology. Food Fight, Anyone?

I gave a very short, minute-and-a-half description of what was wrong with the technosphere, how it was destroying the biosphere. And then I walked over and I got this very powerful sledgehammer and smashed the screen with one blow and smashed the keyboard with another blow. It felt wonderful. The sound it made, the spewing of the undoubtedly poisonous insides into the spotlight, the dust that hung in the air … some in the audience applauded. I bowed and returned to my chair … It was a statement.

Affordable Computing

Nintendo is not losing money on the razor to sell the blades. Why not take that kind of power and build it into a more general-purpose – but stripped-down – machine, with Netscape or Mosaic built in, that everyone can afford? Congress worries about the information-rich versus the information-poor, but most of its members probably don’t realize that computers can cost less than bicycles.

Geek Page: You Say You Want More Bandwidth?

Zippier lightwave systems are in the works. The combination of two technological developments – erbium-doped fiber and solitons – is likely to allow a transmission of more than 100 Gbits per second.

Flux: Things Are Heating Up

With the FBI “reinterpreting” current regulations to investigate those it considers “potential terrorists,” we’d do well to remember our history. When we approve broad powers for organizations with a proven track record of ignoring civil liberties, we do so at the expense of all our liberties.