Joe: The word 'Luddite' is an insult. It means you’re anti-progress, anti-future. But what if the Luddites were right? What if their fight wasn't against technology, but against a future where they were left behind? And what if we're living through the sequel to their story? Lewis: That’s a provocative way to put it. I’ve always just thought of a Luddite as someone who refuses to update their phone. You’re saying there’s more to it than just being stubborn? Joe: A lot more. And it’s the central question in Carl Benedikt Frey's incredible book, The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation. Lewis: Frey… he's that Oxford economist, right? The one whose 2013 study with Michael Osborne went viral? The one that predicted nearly half of all US jobs were at high risk of automation? Joe: Exactly. That paper lit a fire under the whole world. And this book, The Technology Trap, is the deep, historical investigation that explains the 'why' behind those numbers. It’s a tour de force, arguing that our current anxiety about AI and robots is just the latest chapter in a very, very old story. Lewis: An old story? It feels so new, so uniquely 21st-century. Joe: That’s the trap. Frey shows that for most of human history, the default reaction to labor-replacing technology wasn't excitement. It was fear, resistance, and often, outright violence.

Lewis: Okay, so let's start there. Take me back to the original Luddites. Who were they really? I’m picturing angry, simple-minded guys in funny hats smashing machines they don't understand. Joe: That’s the caricature, but the reality is far more compelling. The Luddites, in early 19th-century England, were not anti-technology. They were highly skilled textile artisans. These were the middle class of their day. They used complex hand-operated looms and had spent years mastering their craft. Their identity and their livelihood were intertwined with their skills. Lewis: So what was the problem? Joe: The problem was the arrival of new, automated machinery like the power loom and the stocking frame. These machines didn't help them do their job better; they made their skills completely obsolete. Suddenly, a low-skilled, low-wage worker, often a child, could produce textiles faster and cheaper than a master craftsman. Their income vanished, their status evaporated. They were being erased from the economy. Lewis: Wow. Okay, when you put it like that, smashing the machines doesn't sound so irrational. It sounds like self-defense. Joe: It was. They organized in secret, often at night, in the industrial counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire. They weren't just randomly rampaging. They selectively targeted the machines owned by manufacturers who were cutting wages or firing workers. It was a coordinated, desperate attempt to negotiate their future. Lewis: How did the government respond? Did they see the workers' point? Joe: Not at all. The government’s response was brutal. They passed the Frame Breaking Act of 1812, which made destroying a machine a capital offense. Punishable by death. At one point, the British government had more troops fighting the Luddites in northern England than they had fighting Napoleon in Europe. Lewis: That is insane. They valued a piece of machinery over a human life and livelihood. Joe: That’s the technology trap in a nutshell. The state sided with the owners of capital, the factory owners, over the laborers. But what’s even more fascinating is that this was a new development. For centuries before that, the opposite was true. Rulers often sided with the workers. Lewis: What do you mean? Joe: Frey gives this amazing example from 1589. An English clergyman named William Lee invents a revolutionary stocking-frame knitting machine. It could knit wool into stockings much faster than a person. He’s thrilled, he thinks he’s going to make a fortune, and he goes to Queen Elizabeth I for a patent. Lewis: And she says yes, of course. Joe: She says no. Emphatically. She tells him, "Thou aimest high, Master Lee. Consider thou what the invention could do to my poor subjects. It would surely bring to them ruin by depriving them of employment, thus turning them into beggars." Lewis: A queen actively blocked innovation to protect jobs? That feels completely alien to our modern mindset of 'disrupt or be disrupted.' Joe: It was the standard operating procedure for centuries. Rulers, emperors, and kings across Europe and China frequently banned labor-replacing technologies. Not because they were ignorant, but because they were terrified of social unrest. A mass of unemployed, desperate people was a direct threat to their power. It was politically safer to maintain the status quo, even if it meant slower economic growth. Lewis: So the Luddites weren't an anomaly. They were just on the losing side of a major political shift. Joe: Precisely. The Industrial Revolution could only happen once political power shifted from the landed aristocracy, who feared riots, to a new class of merchants and manufacturers who stood to profit from mechanization. Once the government decided to protect the machines instead of the people, the floodgates opened. And that led to a century of incredible progress, but also immense suffering.

Lewis: Okay, so that explains the brutal birth of the industrial age. But then you have the 20th century. My grandparents’ generation didn't seem to fear technology. For them, it meant cars, electricity, refrigerators, better jobs, a house in the suburbs. It felt like a win-win. What made that period so different? Joe: That's the crucial pivot in Frey's book. He calls the period from roughly the 1920s to the 1980s "The Great Leveling." And the reason it felt different is because the type of technology was different. The key technologies of the Second Industrial Revolution—electrification, the internal combustion engine, the assembly line—were largely enabling technologies. Lewis: Enabling versus replacing. What's the difference? Joe: Replacing technology, like the power loom, makes a skill obsolete. Enabling technology, like an electric drill, makes a worker more productive. It complements their skill rather than replacing it. The assembly line, for example, broke down complex tasks into simpler ones, creating millions of new, well-paying jobs for semi-skilled workers. It pulled people off the farms, where work was grueling and pay was low, and into factories where they could join a union and earn a middle-class wage. Lewis: So technology was creating more jobs than it was destroying, and they were better jobs. A rising tide was actually lifting all boats. Joe: Exactly. And this created a virtuous cycle. As workers became more productive and earned more, they could afford to buy the cars and appliances they were making. Mass production led to mass consumption, which fueled more production. It was a period of shared prosperity. But then, around 1980, the tide started to turn. Frey calls this "The Great Reversal." Lewis: And the culprit is the computer. Joe: The culprit is the computer. Because digital technology, at its core, is a master of routine. It excels at following rules. And it turns out that a huge number of middle-class, middle-income jobs—both in the factory and in the office—were fundamentally based on routine tasks. Think about assembly-line work, bookkeeping, clerical work, data entry. Lewis: All the jobs that could be translated into a set of instructions for a machine to follow. Joe: Precisely. So, unlike the enabling technologies of the 20th century, the computer revolution has been overwhelmingly a replacing technology for the middle class. It didn't just disappear jobs; it hollowed out the entire middle of the labor market. Frey uses the example of the bank teller. Lewis: A classic middle-class job. Joe: Right. In the 1970s, it was a stable career. You followed procedures, you handled cash, you did paperwork. Then the ATM arrived. It automated the most routine part of the job. But the teller job didn't disappear, did it? Lewis: No, but it completely changed. Now they're trying to sell you a mortgage or a credit card. It’s a sales job. Joe: It’s a non-routine, interpersonal, relationship-management job. The routine part was automated, and what was left required a completely different, and arguably higher, skill set. Some tellers made that transition and thrived. Many couldn't and were replaced. That story, Frey argues, has played out across the economy. The stable, routine jobs that formed the bedrock of the middle class have been automated away, leaving a polarized market: high-skill, high-wage creative and analytical jobs at the top, and low-skill, low-wage manual service jobs at the bottom. Lewis: So, technology went from being a power tool for the many to a smart wrecking ball aimed directly at the middle. Joe: That's a perfect analogy. And Frey draws a chilling parallel. He says we are living through a modern version of what Friedrich Engels observed during the first Industrial Revolution. He called it "Engels' Pause." It was a period of several decades where the economy was growing, productivity was soaring, the rich were getting richer... but wages for ordinary people were completely stagnant. All the gains from progress went to the owners of capital. Lewis: That sounds... uncomfortably familiar. Joe: It should. Because that's been the story since the 1980s. Productivity has gone up, but median wages have barely budged. We're in a new technology trap.

Lewis: So what's the way out of this trap? Are we doomed to repeat the 19th century, with all the inequality and social unrest that came with it? Is a Luddite-style backlash inevitable? Joe: Frey's ultimate point is that it's not inevitable. The outcome is a political choice, not a technological destiny. The reason the 20th century's "Great Leveling" happened wasn't an accident of technology. It was shaped by massive public investment and policy choices. Lewis: Like what? Joe: The high school movement is a huge one. In the early 20th century, America made a radical decision to provide universal secondary education. This created a workforce with the skills needed to operate the new technologies of the factory and the office. It was a race between education and technology, and for a long time, education was winning. Lewis: And I assume unions and the social safety net played a part? Joe: A massive part. Unions ensured that productivity gains were shared with workers in the form of higher wages and better benefits. And social programs, from unemployment insurance to Social Security, cushioned the blow for those who were displaced by technological change. It made the transition less terrifying and reduced the incentive to resist it. Lewis: Which brings us to today. The people losing out to automation seem to be the ones with the least political power. Joe: And that's the core of the modern trap. Union membership has collapsed. The social safety net is frayed. And as Frey shows, the economic decline in de-industrialized areas, the so-called Rust Belt, is directly correlated with a rise in political polarization and populism. When people feel their economic future is gone and the system isn't listening, they become susceptible to voices that blame outsiders or promise to turn back the clock. The danger isn't just inequality; it's that a widespread backlash could lead us to block or slow down the very innovations that could, in the long run, make everyone better off. Lewis: It really makes you wonder, what are the 21st-century versions of those policies? How do we ensure AI and automation become enabling technologies for everyone, not just replacing ones for the many? We'd love to hear what you all think about this. Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.