Being a Luddite is cool.

Also it's good for your wardrobe.

I had the misfortune a while ago of being made aware that one of the many AI carnival barkers of our time had written a 15K-word manifesto of his “dream visions” for the technology. I’m very late to the party on responding to it, and it hardly matters against the backdrop of all the other stuff going on in the space now.

But! Because I have a masochistic streak, I read it, in it’s entirety, to see what I’m up against as a person living alongside the companies that are so determined to peddle me garbage and tell me it’s magic. I have no desire to link out to the embarrassing drivel and drive him any clicks—but there is a section within it that has occupied so much of my brain space recently, I do feel compelled to quote it and explain why I have been spiraling in existential dread from having to have my eyes span across it. If you need to verify this essay exists or understand the context it sat in (which is a baldly fascist, eugenicist, and pathetically desperate plea that reeks of I need to prove the VC firms that funded me weren’t wrong to do so) you can certainly copy the quote and find it. Also, yes, it does relate to fashion and style, I promise. It takes me a minute to get there, but please just go with me here!!

The particular quote in question is:

The opt-out problem. One concern in both developed and developing world alike is people opting out of AI-enabled benefits (similar to the anti-vaccine movement, or Luddite movements more generally). There could end up being bad feedback cycles where, for example, the people who are least able to make good decisions opt out of the very technologies that improve their decision-making abilities, leading to an ever-increasing gap and even creating a dystopian underclass … This would, once again, place a moral blemish on AI’s positive advances. This is a difficult problem to solve as I don’t think it is ethically okay to coerce people, but we can at least try to increase people’s scientific understanding—and perhaps AI itself can help us with this. One hopeful sign is that historically anti-technology movements have been more bark than bite: railing against modern technology is popular, but most people adopt it in the end, at least when it’s a matter of individual choice. Individuals tend to adopt most health and consumer technologies, while technologies that are truly hampered, like nuclear power, tend to be collective political decisions.

The fact that this person is the CEO to anything—much less the CEO of one of the single most absurdly funded companies in the history of time—is distressing to me to say the least. Here’s why:

• To liken the skepticism, recoil, disinterest, or concern that people feel about the misapplication of and the over-promising of the value of “AI” to anti-vaccine sentiment is vile. It is inaccurate, at best. But it also SO calculated in it’s intent to associate critique with genuine danger. This is actually such a dubious comparison that this man should be removed from his position as CEO simply for thinking it, let alone committing it to paper. To be clear: there is nothing remotely similar about these sentiments. Even the most intense loathing of AI does not come close in it’s effects on society as the misinformation campaigns used to drive folks to reject life saving medicine.

• “Luddite movements more generally” is also such a calculated use of a word with associations he either, at best, clearly doesn’t understand or, at worst, is intentionally trying to leverage disingenuously. I’ll expand on this further, as it’s the section that relates most specifically to style, power, language, and control of capital.

• “…people who are least able to make good decisions opt out of the very technologies that improve their decision-making abilities…” is an underhanded way to say “marginalized people have valid concerns about how I have made decisions about technology and I desperately need you to think those people are stupid so I can exploit the very things they’re concerned about.”

• “…I don’t think it is ethically okay to coerce people, but …” as my mother always says, “if someone is telling you something and follows it up with but, just ignore everything that came before but, because they’re bullshitting* you.” (*I’m editorializing, my mom rarely swears.)

• “…historically anti-technology movements have been more bark than bite: railing against modern technology is popular, but most people adopt it in the end, at least when it’s a matter of individual choice” is such clever mental gymnastics to say: “historically large-scale labor movements have been ultimately crushed by the overwhelming power of wealthy industrial power and workers and consumers have been forced to acquiesce to using things they don’t actually want or like because they have no other option outside of being unemployed and rendered homeless.” Incredible how blatantly this man is basically just saying: “eventually, marginalized people give up if you beat them hard enough.”

The whole thing upset me, clearly, and I could spend my life railing against each and every sentence he wrote, point by point, and paste it here into the ether to make myself feel better at having done something. But, I was especially aggrieved to see the term Luddite getting thrown around as a term for “regressive, technophobic, and dangerously dumb individual.” This is how the term is used generally, and especially by the tech-bro-industrial-complex, but that is not at all what the term means. And it’s been a pretty deliberate effort by those in power to make sure you don’t know what it actually means.

OK JM, so what the hell is a Luddite then?

An absolutely based fit IMHO. Look at those leg warmers. Etching by 1812 by Messrs. Walker and Knight, Sweetings Alley, Royal Exchange. Collaged together by yours truly with some other public domain items. <3

Before I get into it, I want to plug Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech which has been my most recent reminder of this particular term’s history. There are numerous other works within his work which I am condensing and that can be found in his associated citations. I’ll give you broad strokes; please add this to your TBR for specifics.

The term Luddite emerged in the 19th century—it’s earliest appearance around 1811. It referred to the “followers of Ned Ludd” who was an apocryphal figure (read: didn’t actually exist, but stood in for many people who did and was a common pseudonym for them) of members of English textile guilds.

Depending on your interest level in and/or forced education of English history (or both!), you may recall that 1811 falls in within the so-called “Industrial Revolution”—a period of intense and deepening dependence on the automation of various industries for the purposes of large-scale production, which prior had been limited in scope due to the constraints of earlier end-to-end, in-home production within the “cottage industry.”

Imagine it like this: the Industrial Revolution was the textile, food, automotive, and general goods version of the age we are living through now with technology. The rush to automate, cheapen, and speed up textile production was basically the equivalent to the rush to “scale everything” in tech we have now. The only way to truly profit in a model of expensive and enormous machinery, giant factories, and head-spinning production runs during that time was to secure scale—likewise, the only way to truly profit in tech is to tap into a hyper-growth market and enclose the users into a particular platform or technology (e.g. Facebook/IG with social media, WhatsApp with messaging, etc.). Hockey sticks. Number go up. Shareholder happy.

(An aside: Enclosure in tech—the taking of a large enough group of people and extracting some kind of value from them on your platform—is a similarly historically rooted phenomenon. In England, the practice of enclosure was the process by which the previously common community land was enclosed to create private land. I don’t have time to explore this and the term Luddite simultaneously in depth, but suffice it to say this practice was similarly one whose goal is to quickly extract capital from something that previously did not generate it in a way that was easy to capture by a particular individual or company.)

Luddites were fundamentally concerned with the worsening of textiles and the de-skilling and de-valuing of their labor under the practices common of industrial landowners, as well as the rampant exploitation of those employed in factory settings. You’ll notice that they were not technophobic; rather, they were critical of dangerous practices, concerned with the trade-off in quality, and distressed by the lack of respect and empathy they were shown by the wealthier class. The Luddites were, as a requirement of their critique, some of the most technologically advanced, well-versed, and skilled laborers of their time. They were textile experts; who knew what machines to use when, when to use their hands and manual tools instead, and how to control for the quality of what they made. They had the expertise to know that the factory production practices and machinery—machinery that they themselves had used in their homes in some fashion before they were industrialized—made things objectively worse when applied at scale in the ways they were being applied. (They also knew how to trust their bodies and take breaks when needed—incredible, a way to manage burnout...) This is not fear; it’s rejection and resistance of poor imitations and a demand to be given a seat at the table to control how your skills are used, rather than allowing them to be abused. This was justified outrage.

The term Luddite has subsequently been fashioned into “mindless rejection of progress or technology” because wealthy industrial leaders need you to believe that all technology is inherently innovative, progressive, and improves your life. As we have seen countless times, this is not nearly the truth.

You should be very suspicious of any person or company interested in deskilling you, selling a lesser version of your skills back to you, and then insisting they’re solving a problem you never had to justify the premium cost they charge to do so.

You seem big mad…

I am. I am big mad. But we can only tackle one thing at a time. And so many other people are tackling this already, way better than me from every angle. I look to: Timnit Gebru, Abeba Birhane, Ed Zitron, Edward Ongweso Jr, and myriad other folks (including forever fave vrk <3) on this kind of thing.

And the thing I wanna tackle anyhow is how all this relates to style…

Embracing your inner Luddite is good for your personal style.

Think of the coolest people you know. Not a celebrity you admire or think is really stylish. Not an imagined figure in your head of what “cool” means. I mean think of the people you would describe as most cool among your circle of friends or extended group of acquaintances or at your work or at your school. Who in your daily life is cool? Here are some traits they’ll invariably have:

• A distinct look. That is not necessarily that they will be stylish or fashionable in any way; they might be! But what I mean is you’re able to look at them and immediately go “that’s them.” You wouldn’t lose track of them in a crowd. They don’t have to look like they’re coming from a runway to be this identifiable; they’ll just be very authentic to themselves.

• Strong values. These are the people in your life who are really committed to what matters to them, and unafraid of sharing what those things are. This will manifest physically in things they unashamedly support and seek out (and even adorn themselves with), and the things they avoid, or things they recoil from.

• An undeniable aura. I’m sure kids-these-days have stopped saying rizz at this point and I’m just proving I’m a dinosaur, but it’s basically that—the rizz factor. They’re so distinct and so committed to their values that they have this really insistent charisma that draws you in.

How does this relate to Luddite-ness or dress generally? Well, I propose to you this:

If we agree that being a Luddite is being justifiably outraged at the proliferation of exploitation—rather than being fearful of any particular thing—then it follows that embracing that Luddite energy is going to inform what you buy, and shape your values in a big way. (And, subsequently, this will come together to bolster your aura.)

“That’s all very well and great, JM,” I hear you saying, “but what does that actually mean in practice? Can you give an example instead of these vague, woo-woo ass definitions and meanderings?”

Why, yes! *Cue some kind of tune for: local woman who loves her husband*

Anyone who has met my husband could easily pick him out of a crowd afterward. Why? How? A few things:

• He’s got big hair. It’s really curly, always in some kind of mad-scientist type style, and there’s quite a lot of it.

• He will inevitably be rocking some kind of graphic tee. My favorites are of course the ones I have bought for him (like Rinaldi and Kline…) This will almost always include at least one hole somewhere along a seam or the underarm due to wear.

• His socks will be crew style and he will not be taking questions. Crew socks with jeans? Yes. Khakis? Yes. Shorts? Why, yes. He doesn’t want to see an ankle sock anywhere near him. Never met a no-show sock he trusted. He’s committed to the crew. [Editor’s note: Because ankle socks always become heel socks, and a sock that bunches up under my foot is hardly a sock at all.]

• Nike Air Monarchs. IYKYK. [Editor’s note: For those who don’t, they’re Dad shoes.]

• Plaid? He’d like more. He’s got plaid in every flavor. Every density. Every color. Seasonless! He’s going to be mildly lumberjack adjacent 4ever and you can’t stop him.

• He’s kind of a magnet for bullshit. He’s gonna find some, and he’s gonna tell you about it, or be telling someone about it, or be reacting to it in the distance in some way.

• In the winter, he’ll be wearing a scarf or hat his mom knit for him. (I have one too!)

• In the summer, he’ll just be sweaty. [Editor’s note: You’d think I just got out of the pool or hit by a passing rain shower.]

Now some of you are going to accuse me of actually dunking on my husband here. Something like, “Girl, you just called him sweaty! That’s mean… and also not style related!”

I raise to you that, in fact, all of these qualities together do actually reveal my husband’s unique and COOL style:

• He’s very much a mad scientist. He’s always tinkering.

• He has a lot of interests and people he admires, and he likes supporting what they’re up to, and talking about them to people. He’ll be a billboard for the stuff he believes in and loves. (RCR enjoyers unite. Ask him about bicycles, you will be talking to him for minimum 2 hours.)

• He values comfort, quality, and he’s always down for a long walk. He takes care of things he loves. He isn’t going to throw something away when there’s a minor flaw. Has a hole? Asks me nicely to fix it with a patch.

• He loves his mom. He appreciates something made by hand and with love. (VERY COOL!!!)

• And, he’s not trying to fight a battle against Virginia’s humidity that he’ll never win. He knows his limits. He honors his body.

You’re probably not going to catch my husband on a best dressed list at the Oscar’s. That’d be a really weird thing to optimize his wardrobe for though, no? A person he has no interest in being, and an event he’ll never attend? Style isn’t making yourself look like you belong somewhere else that’s cooler and better; it’s expressing yourself in a way that’s consistent with what you value and being cool because you do that every day, in some way, always in a way that’s visible to others.

On the importance of play.

This has all basically been an elaborate way of arriving at talking about some sweaters I’ve made in the last few months. I’m going to drop some fun Procreate-powered collages of them here.

The little cat face is so goooooood. The background quilt is “Ocean Wave” by Frances Brooks Wyld, 1958. Art Institute of Chicago.

I love the balance of colors and patterns especiallyyyyy in this one personally. Likewise, again, the background quilt is “Ocean Wave.”

Depending on your personal attraction to any patterns/colors/shapes and your knowledge of textiles, you might say:

• “Woah! Love these—so cool!!! They’re so fun.”

• “Hmm… those are certainly patterns you can put together, but should you…”

• “OK, Grandma!”

• “When are you going to wear a sweater that’s both heavy as hell on one side and incredibly delicate and light on the other? This feels confused. Also, why didn’t you join them properly?”

Or any other number of reactions. Feel free to share in the comments section.

The point of sharing these is: I don’t actually think either of these sweaters “works.” At least, not in the way that my 6-figure (😭) BFA design training trained me that they should. Here’s a few things that ran through my head while making them:

• I absolutely shouldn’t be sewing these together. Like, I’m not even serging them. This is not how knits work.

• I will never be able to recreate these items again.

• The stretch on these pieces is so different, it’s going to deform in a weird way over time.

These are all important things to think about when you’re planning to make something and eventually prep it for mass-production. You need something to properly joined (or, at least properly joined enough) to ensure it arrives to a customer in a condition that they can wear it by the time they buy it. So that they can wash it and still wear it afterward. You need to be able to communicate how to construct it to your manufacturers, and you need to do that in a very standardized way to ensure that you aren’t sending a bunch of wildly different items out there into the world and having customers come back and return it when you fail to do so. And, you should (although plenty of brands don’t) be trying to ensure that the garment will weather the test of time and retain it’s qualities for extended wear. (It has now been zero days since I mentioned Issey Miyake and Pleats Please…)

But at so many times during the hours I put these sweaters together—from scraps I had from the woman I bought my knitting machine from or that I had made myself as test samples—I genuinely had to remind myself that not everything needs to be for mass-production. Not everything is supposed to scale. It doesn’t matter if I can never make this sweater again—I’m making it for myself, for now, and until such time that I can make it something else or find it a new home or seam rip it open and use it for stuffing in a cat toy or whatever-the-hell. The fact that these aren’t something I can make into a SKU—and the fact that most people probably wouldn’t even want me to—is a feature, not a bug.

I’m not saying everyone needs to run out and get into knitting (it’s super fun though!!)—more so, I think everyone’s style would benefit from getting in touch with play.

I like these sweaters—even if they don’t “work”—because I had a lot of fun collaging them together and seeing what attracted me. What colors I wanted to put together. What patterns I wanted to place next to each other. What shapes I thought looked cool or interesting on my body. I just played around!

You don’t need to make the garments from scratch to do this. You can just play dress-up with your closet. With your friends. With your mom or dad or brother or sister or whomever in your chosen family. With people who are selling stuff (or giving it away) in your community. And you can share your stuff too! You can empower other people play with their style. Your willingness to experiment with what attracts your eye and feels good—regardless of if a “professional” or an influencer would agree with your choices—will literally free up so much mental space for you of what else you might like, and who you are. And that spirit—the spirit of not everything needing to be optimized for mass consumption, and of how we construct the things we own in a world where that’s a value forced down our throats endlessly at the expense of anything else—is the Luddite spirit.

Embrace a little bit of rejection and resistance to know yourself better. Also, it will make tech bros mad. :)))))

As an extra added bonus, you’ll avoid becoming a meme:

No shade to the outfit or the folks wearing it. Perfectly lovely folks I’m sure. Just hilariously and unintentionally same-y and absolutely driven by a need to sell these SKUs to as many ‘light academia’ coded people as possible.

Special bonus news!!!

I am working on a novel. It is currently shaping up to be absolutely batshit—which I love. There’s romance. There’s horror. There’s murder. You’ve heard of a whodunit, and a howcatchem too. This is a willshegetawaywithit.

I’ll be at a writer’s workshop at the end of May, so I gotta get cracking on finishing my manuscript for review. 20K words in—and methinks it’s got at least 40K to go. 🏃‍♀️

Unless I need a break from it (which is not improbable) I’m going to pause my style-musings here for now.

It’s been fun. Root for me and my maniacal protagonist please!!!

xoxoxo JM

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