A Luddite argument is one in which some broadly useful technology is
opposed on the grounds that it will discomfit the people who benefit
from the inefficiency the technology destroys. An argument is especially
Luddite if the discomfort of the newly challenged professionals is
presented as a general social crisis, rather than as trouble for a
special interest. ("How will we know what to listen to without record
store clerks!") When the music industry suggests that the prices of
music should continue to be inflated, to preserve the industry as we
have known it, that is a Luddite argument, as is the suggestion that
Google pay reparations to newspapers or the phone company's opposition
to VoIP undermining their ability to profit from older ways of making
phone calls. ...What the internet does is move data from point A to B,
but what it is for is empowerment. Using the internet without putting
new capabilities into the hands of its users (who are, by definition,
amateurs in most things they can now do) would be like using a mechanical
loom and not lowering the cost of buying a coat -- possible, but utterly
beside the point. The internet's output is data, but its product is
freedom, lots and lots of freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of the
press, freedom of association, the freedom of an unprecedented number
of people to say absolutely anything they like at any time, with the
reasonable expectation that those utterances will be globally available,
broadly discoverable at no cost, and preserved for far longer than
most utterances are, and possibly forever. ...It is possible to want
a society in which new technology doesn't demolish traditional ways
of doing things. It is not possible to hold this view without being a
Luddite, however. That view -- incumbents should wield veto-power over
adoption of tools they dislike, no matter the positive effects for the
citizenry -- is the core of Luddism, then and now.