Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech

by Brian Merchant

Overview

Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year

The "rich and gripping" true story of the first time machines came for human jobs—and how the Luddite uprising explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech and AI today (Naomi Klein)

The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods.

The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines—on punishment of death—and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees.

Today, technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are crowding factory floors, and artificial intelligence will soon pervade every aspect of our economy. How will this change the way we live? And what can we do about it?

The answers lie in Blood in the Machine. Brian Merchant intertwines a lucid examination of our current age with the story of the Luddites, showing how automation changed our world—and is shaping our future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668638293
Publisher:	Hachette Book Group
Publication date:	09/26/2023
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)

About the Author

Brian Merchant is the technology columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the author of the national bestseller The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone. He’s the co-founder of Terraform, Vice’s science fiction outlet, and the founder of Gizmodo’s Automaton project examining AI and the future of work. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, Fast Company, and beyond. He lives in Los Angeles.

Eric Jason Martin is an Earphones Award–winning narrator. He has narrated many dozens of audiobooks in fiction and nonfiction. He is also the host and producer of the award-winning This American Wife, a popular podcast, and now web series, that features original comedy and stories, as well as interviews with authors such as Robert Greene and Amy Tan.

Editorial Reviews

An absolutely indispensable, shocking, and fascinating tale by one of today’s most important technology writers. This riveting book is as much a work of history as it is an urgent examination of our ability to resist the overwhelming changes technology is wreaking on our lives.”

New York Times bestselling author Christopher Leonard

A rich and gripping account of a chronically misunderstood historical chapter, one with urgent relevance to our own time, as we once again pit humans against machines.

New York Times Bestselling author of This Changes Naomi Klein

An immersive, propulsive tale...an eye-opening history delivering powerful lessons for our high-tech present.

author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Rem Margaret O'Mara

This is an absolutely indispensable, shocking, and fascinating tale by one of today’s most important technology writers. This riveting book is as much a work of history as it is an urgent examination of our ability to resist the overwhelming changes technology is wreaking on our lives. The Luddites knew that automation, job loss and the consolidation of wealth aren’t inevitable. We can shape these forces if we’re willing to break a loom or two.

New York Times bestselling author of Kochland and Christopher Leonard

A thrilling history and a stirring manifesto for seizing the means of production, or smashing it, when necessary. Automation has always been about turning people into machines: brainless and disposable. To be a Luddite is to demand a say in the future. It's not enough to ask what a machine does - we have to ask who it does it for and who it does it to.

New York Times bestselling author of Little Brothe Cory Doctorow

After Blood in the Machine, you’ll never look at your computer screen— or a hammer—the same way again.”

nationally bestselling author Malcolm Harris

Forget everything you know about the Luddites. After Blood in the Machine you’ll never look at your computer screen – or a hammer – the same way again.

bestselling author of Palo Alto Malcolm Harris

I’ve thrown around the word ‘Luddite’ often in my work, mainly as a cheap insult, so Brian Merchant’s rich and absorbing history of the movement was, for me, both a revelation and an embarrassment. The embarrassment is at how little I’d known about them, and how the lessons I’d taken from their effort were based on a silly caricature. The revelation, in Brian’s deft telling, is that technology never has to be inevitable, that we humans have agency over how we live with the machines, and that perhaps the best way to figure out what to do about the future is to look to the past.

New York Times Opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo

A thrilling history and a stirring manifesto for seizing the means of production, or smashing it, when necessary.”

New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow

Brian Merchant has pulled off a kind of temporal magic trick: He's told a two-century-old story with such resonant themes about technology, labor and human exploitation—and done it with such gripping, visceral detail and empathy—that it feels like it's about our future.

author of Sandworm and Tracers in the Dark Andy Greenberg

Engrossing and exhaustively researched

The Culture Journalist

Brian Merchant has pulled off a kind of temporal magic trick: He's told a two-century-old story with such resonant themes about technology, labor and human exploitation—and done it with such gripping, visceral detail and empathy—that it feels like it's about our future.

author of Sandworm and Tracers in the Dark Any Greenberg

09/11/2023

Journalist Merchant (The One Device) offers a stirring account of the Luddites’ “messy rebellion” against new technological innovations in early-19th-century England. Merchant traces the narrative arcs of several groups, including the Luddites, skilled workers in the cloth industry whose lives were irreversibly overhauled by the arrival of new machinery (such as water-powered yarn-spinning machines and looms); the prominent cultural and literary figures, such as Lord Byron, who took an active interest in their grievances; and the factory owners who lived in fear of their nighttime attacks. The portrayal is one deeply sympathetic to the Luddite cause; Merchant is keen to deconstruct the modern, negative connotations of the term “Luddite,” emphasizing that they were driven to act not by some blinding, stubborn hatred of technology, as is often assumed, but rather by a deep understanding of its potential pitfalls and a distaste for the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small number of privileged overseers. Merchant draws astute comparisons to technology’s disruptions of jobs and livelihoods in the 21st century, using the rise of Uber and AI as prominent examples. This is a significant contribution to the history of the Industrial Revolution and a strong warning against complacency in the face of technological change. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

I’ve thrown around the word ‘Luddite’ often in my work, mainly as a cheap insult, so Brian Merchant’s rich and absorbing history of the movement was, for me, both a revelation and an embarrassment. The embarrassment is at how little I’d known about them, and how the lessons I’d taken from their effort were based on a silly caricature. The revelation, in Brian’s deft telling, is that technology never has to be inevitable, that we humans have agency over how we live with the machines, and that perhaps the best way to figure out what to do about the future is to look to the past.”—Farhad Manjoo, New York Times Opinion columnist

“A rich and gripping account of a chronically misunderstood historical chapter, one with urgent relevance to our own time, as we once again pit humans against machines.”—Naomi Klein, New York Times Bestselling author of This Changes Everything

"A thrilling history and a stirring manifesto for seizing the means of production, or smashing it, when necessary. Automation has always been about turning people into machines: brainless and disposable. To be a Luddite is to demand a say in the future. It's not enough to ask what a machine does - we have to ask who it does it for and who it does it to."—Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother and The Internet Con

“This is an absolutely indispensable, shocking, and fascinating tale by one of today’s most important technology writers. This riveting book is as much a work of history as it is an urgent examination of our ability to resist the overwhelming changes technology is wreaking on our lives. The Luddites knew that automation, job loss and the consolidation of wealth aren’t inevitable. We can shape these forces if we’re willing to break a loom or two.”—Christopher Leonard, New York Times bestselling author of Kochland and The Lords of Easy Money

“Forget everything you know about the Luddites. After Blood in the Machine you’ll never look at your computer screen – or a hammer – the same way again.”—Malcolm Harris, bestselling author of Palo Alto

"An immersive, propulsive tale...an eye-opening history delivering powerful lessons for our high-tech present."—Margaret O'Mara, author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

“Brian Merchant has pulled off a kind of temporal magic trick: He's told a two-century-old story with such resonant themes about technology, labor and human exploitation—and done it with such gripping, visceral detail and empathy—that it feels like it's about our future.”—Andy Greenberg, author of Sandworm and Tracers in the Dark

“A riveting look into the past, and a cautionary tale for our rapidly approaching future…. Fast paced, engagingly written, and exhaustively researched, this work of history could not feel more relevant to the current moment. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.”
 —Kim Kelly, author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold Story of American Labor

"Engrossing and exhaustively researched"—The Culture Journalist

"A well-argued linkage of early industrial and postindustrial struggles for workers' rights."—Kirkus

"Brian Merchant’s new book...is phenomenal. It is both a rousing, meticulously-researched history and an insightful, timely argument about the present state of technology. It’s one of those books that sticks with you...You should buy it. You should read it."—"The Future, Now and Then" Newsletter

“Stirring...This is a significant contribution to the history of the Industrial Revolution and a strong warning against complacency in the face of technological change.”—Publishers Weekly

“This book is a welcome parable of worker solidarity and resistance.”—Booklist

“Blood in the Machine compares the labor struggles of the Industrial Revolution to today’s abusive gig economy.... Derived from an immense trove of archival materials and secondary historical sources, [Merchant] brings a journalist's touch to the Luddites' travails, drawing connections between the conflicts and indignities of their epoch and our own.”—Gavin Mueller, New York Times Book Review

"Merchant's retelling of the Luddite cause is a gripping and detailed romp."—Wired

"An eye-opening read... Merchant unspools a myth-busting historical tale interwoven with pointed comparisons to how modern tech giants are eroding workers’ collective rights."—New Scientist

“An excellent book that everyone should read.”—DailyKos

“A historical tour de force.”—CyberNews

From the Publisher

03/01/2022

Many people today worry that technology threatens their way of life and very livelihoods—just as the Luddites did in early 1800s England, leading them to smash machinery in numerous factory raids challenging the personal costs of the Industrial Revolution. Wired/Vice contributor Merchant, whose The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone was a USA TODAY best seller and Financial Times Business Book of the Year finalist, revisits the Luddite rebellion with an eye to discovering what it can tell us about our tech worries today.

Library Journal

Eric Jason Martin presents this history of the Luddite Uprising in nineteenth-century England like a war correspondent embedded among the rampaging textile workers. His gung-ho narration enlivens the audiobook and complements the workers' fight for their livelihoods against the one percenters of that era. The audiobook sets the record straight regarding the goals of the oft-misunderstood Luddites and their aggressive tactics: The weavers destroyed looms and other machines, and the British government responded by sending the military to deal with the uprising. The displacement of jobs triggered by the Industrial Revolution is also compared to the 21st-century dilemma of workers who have been displaced by today's gig economy, app-based businesses, and AI. Listeners may conclude that no trade or profession is safe from its own obsolescence. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2024 - AudioFile

2023-08-11
A history of the 19th-century revolutionaries who fought against the machine.

In 1812, writes Merchant, the author of The One Device, British workers watched as power looms began to displace them, then rose up in a movement named after a young rebel named Ned Ludd, leading the UK to “the brink of civil war.” Two centuries later, advanced digital technology in the hands of capitalists threatens human livelihoods in many fields, occasion for a new Luddite revolt. Merchant chronicles how the British militants didn’t necessarily object to labor-saving devices, but instead to how they were used—namely, to enrich a small handful of industrialists at the expense of a great mass of skilled workers. Indeed, Merchant adds, when textile workers asked that a machine be put in place to measure thread count, an index of quality, the owners refused, “preferring to retain the unilateral power to determine the quality of a garment themselves, and to offer workers the prices they approved of.” Under such conditions, weavers’ wages fell by nearly half between 1800 and 1811, good reason for protest. At times, those demonstrations turned violent, with factories burned and one particularly hated capitalist murdered. Some reforms ensued, but the supremacy of the bosses endured. Just so, Merchant writes compellingly, while today’s gig workers may object to the whims of employers who offer few benefits and jobs that “are subject to sudden changes in workload and pay rates,” it seems unlikely that those bosses will change their ways short of a mass uprising. After all, Merchant charges, Jeff Bezos determined that it was cheaper to keep emergency technicians on hand to treat heatstroke rather than air-condition some of his warehouses. “And since Amazon does it,” writes the author, “everyone else must make their employees machinelike as well, if they hope to keep pace.”

A well-argued linkage of early industrial and postindustrial struggles for workers’ rights.

Kirkus Reviews