Ludd Was Right: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

I'll die with my hammer in my hand.''|John Henry, ''[http://www.museums.udel.edu/jones/archive/archive_pages/artist_portfolios/white/white-johnhenry2.html The Ballad of John Henry]''}}

 

* ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode ''"The Ultimate Computer"'': A new computer has been developed that can control an entire star-ship by itself, making crews and captains obsolete. For the entire episode, Kirk, Bones and at one point (briefly) even Spock make speeches about how terrible it is that people will be replaced by machines, how the computer will take something of what it is to be a "man" away from humanity, how computers just ''can't'' do the job with the same "heart" as people, etc. Bones evokes the trope explicitly at one point, noting how hard it is to lose one's job to automation. Of course, just to drive the point home, it turns out that [[AI Is a Crapshoot]], and the computer's designer was insane, to boot. [[Broken Aesop|Which of course]] ''proves'' that [[Ludd Was Right]]... even though it's made clear that if the designer was more psychologically stable, the computer might have worked just fine.

** The [[aesop]] feels more sincere in the first half of the episode, ''before'' the computer conveniently goes haywire, when it appears to be working [[Gone Horribly Right|just fine:]]

'''McCoy,''' ''later:'' "We're all sorry for the other guy when he loses his job to a machine. When it comes to your job, that's different. And it always will be different." }}

*** Although one cannot help but wonder if "Losing your Job" in the post-monetary [[Star Trek]] utopia isn't really more than a bit of a nuisance.

* In the [[Codex Alera]] , the Alerans have become so dependent on magic that they have abandoned most technology as inferior. Alera is on the brink of destruction when Bernard (at his nephew's request) rebuilds an ancient device that, combined with Aleran magic, becomes the most potent weapon in existence. The device? A catapult.

* This is invoked by [[Mad Scientist|economist]] Hubert Turvy in ''[[Discworld/Making Money|Making Money]]'', to explain why using the newly found {{spoiler|''four '''thousand''' golems''}} would be a bad idea.

"Well, yes. To begin with, they would put one hundred and twenty thousand men out of work," said Hubert, "but that would be only the start. They do not require food, clothing, or shelter.... The demand for many things would drop and further unemployment would result...." }}

** Although, unlike most examples on this page, he actually has a point: Introducing this much free labor into the labor pool actually ''would'' crash the economy. It'd be like the Industrialization in Europe during the late 19th century, only in fast forward. Pratchett, being a Brit himself, was probably quite aware of this.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

** However, the key for many of those who pull through very well is... Industrializing, the actual technological way. Complete with smoke-belching, coal fired steam engines (the kind emblematic of the ''darkest'' days of the Industrial Revolution). Hence [[Ludd Was Right]] was almost certainly not an intended aesop.

*** Also, the eponymous storms were utterly unforeseeable. The Empire was prepared and able to cope with every conceivable disaster, they were simple caught in the position of a society dependent on, say, wind power for energy when the wind suddenly stops blowing.