A weeklong festival called the Summer of Ludd just ran in New York City's East Village, drawing hundreds of attendees to Tompkins Square Park for events built around rejecting smartphones, Big Tech, and algorithmic life.
The festival opened with a live theatrical performance on the history of the Luddite movement, the 19th-century English artisans who violently resisted industrial displacement and were crushed by the British monarchy for it. Subsequent sessions covered offline dating, textile mending, and organized resistance to data center expansion.
The full piece is worth reading for what it reveals about the specific demographics showing up to these events and how organizers are translating historical labor rage into present-day tech politics for a generation that grew up entirely inside the systems they are now pushing back against.
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