[dsign]

There's often an issue of perspective. Imagine you visit an 11th century monk in the occupation of copying manuscripts by candle light. This is a guy that spends long cold winters hunched over parchment, using sticks with god knows what passes for ink to copy and illuminate beautiful texts. You tell him that you will buy manuscripts from him, as long as they are typeset in Times New Roman regular, 12pt, and please use this laptop for that. Also you are setting shop with all sort of modern niceties next to the convent, including heating fans and desk electric lamps. Of course the monk will be heart-broken and incredibly grumpy at the loss of time to practice the craft he loves, which is writing and illuminating by hand. But those heating fans are something alright.

We already have desk lamps and heating fans, and many other things which make daily life convenient. But if you hand me a piece of paper (or better, a notebook), I'll fill it just enumerating the amount of diseases I want gone from the world. At least in theory, we know the laws of physics and how things are put together, and we know many of the impossibles of today are simply due to extreme scarcity and cost of qualified intellectual labor.

Maybe what we need is a shift from extreme pride on a specific set of technical skills, to priding ourselves in understanding enough of the world to solve some of its problems.

[samrus]

There is also an economic aspect though. Thats where the ludditism comes in

If the monk thinks that this laptop means he wont get as much income (assuming selling manuscripts was their primary income) because of a race to the bottom with other monks, then rhey will start worrying about how theyre gonna afford to keep the chapel running. Where theyll get the money to pay the electric bill for all these niceties