The Machine is Not Inevitable
Learning to say "No" is what we need to keep us sane and holy in the Age of the Machine.
“If we can envisage the promise of a better and fuller vision of life than that forced upon us by our mechanistic civilisation, then we must cease to regard its manifestations as inevitable. For as soon as we adopt this critical habit of mind, techniques to different and better ends at once become possible.”
- L.T.C. Rolt, Small Machines for Small Famers
“No.” Such a little word; such great power. Uttering this diminutive word can stop great and mighty things from happening, can enable resistance to abuse and to tyranny, and can bring to an end that which needs to be ended. “No.” — saying this powerful little word with confidence and conviction might just be the key to keeping us sane and holy in this modern age of the Machine.1
And before any technological evangelist tells you otherwise, you really can just say “No”. If you feel there is a manifestation of the Machine knocking at your door — whether it be AI, a smartphone, or the Internet of Things — that you do not wish to engage with or adopt, then you can just refuse to let it in. You are free to do so, and ultimately, have the power to do so. The machines are just machines, after all. They each possess that little switch which renders them utterly powerless: the off switch. And if enough of us said “No”, if enough of us switched off the switch and refused to engage, then maybe whatever manifestation of the Machine we were collectively resisting would be starved of enough oxygen (or energy) to render it obsolete.
The Machine and its myriad digital minions are not inevitable.
Of course, taking such a stance in this Technological Age will be costly. Sometimes very costly. And I wish you to be under no disillusionment concerning this. The need to engage with digital technology (which is perhaps the chief manifestation of the Machine) is creeping into ever more nooks and crannies of our lives: from transport tickets only available on the app to “we only accept card payments here”; from essential digital healthcare passports to schools that require their students to use tablets; we have gone from “there is an app for that” to “you will need an app for that”. And, when we look at the agendas and manifestos of our governments, it is plain that this is only going to get worse. Digital technology has colonised almost every aspect of our lives — and its glowing eyes are set on those last few frontiers it has not yet managed to bring under its dominion. To function fully and freely in the modern world, it has become essential to submit to the Machine.
But “functioning fully and freely” does not mean one must submit to the Machine. There is no law, yet, which says one must embrace the digital or that one must replace handheld tools with power tools. However, by saying “No” to certain aspects of the Machine, one will have to bear some significant costs. One can, for example, still operate in society without a smartphone, but with an inevitable analog handicap. Certain opportunities will not be available, certain tasks will take much longer, and certain goods will be locked behind doors with digital pin numbers. Counting the cost of tech resistance is for each individual to decide. No one can draw your boundaries for you, no one can force you to say “Yes” or “No”. But whatever you decide, there will be a cost to pay: whether that be missed opportunities by saying “No”, or a decimated attention span by saying “Yes”.2
If it is possible, then, to say “No” to the Machine, that means technological determinism is a myth3 perpetuated by those with a vested interest in it being true. The various technological devises and innovations, along with the Machine mindset that fuels them, are not some autonomous being; they cannot materialise, develop, or even operate without us giving them assent. We are in control. We have the power to say, “Thus far and no further”; it is just that we have kidded ourselves we have no power — or we have faced up to the enormity of the costs of saying “No” and have baulked — and thus have found ourselves paradoxically enslaved by something we could just turn off and stop.
But saying “No” is hard and the costs of sustained resistance and refusal are too great for many of us to bear. It doesn’t help either that too many of our systems and infrastructures rely on digital technologies, and also that many digital technologies have enabled things that are immensely desirable. Great wisdom required, then, in determining when to say “No” and when and what to say “Yes” to. And to complicate matters further, we must not forget that sometimes good digital technologies have undesirable effects or function as stepping stones to more intrusive and hostile states of affair. Saying “No” is hard, and knowing when to say “No”, is perhaps harder still.
However, this call for technological discernment does not negate the fact that if we are to make progress in our resistance to the Machine, we need a critical mass of the population to make costly sacrifices and become fellow Machine rebels, Luddites, agrarians, convivialists, or whatever you want to call the members of this very informal “movement”. It is thus nigh on time to give this movement some practical strategies for Machine resistance. Not a list of permissible or impermissible technologies, for that is doomed to fail under the weight of a thousand caveats and abstractions. No, what I believe this movement needs above all else, is to reform the values and cultural imaginations of society, so that our families, friends, and neighbours come to desire traditions, analog methods, and non-Machine things — and crucially, to commit to using them.
One of the chief strategies we have in our armoury is training our minds, and the minds of our neighbours, to value quality over quantity: a disposition which is at the heart of what L.T.C. Rolt means concerning “different and better ends”.4 I have written on this extensively before and won’t repeat what I said here. But this I will say, cultivating this disposition will take time and require much mental effort. We all have been born in a modern and industrial era where, from birth, we have been inculcated with the industrial and Machine values of efficiency, mass-consumerism, and cheapness, and have been exposed to quantities in our everyday lives that would have dumbfounded our ancestors. Abundance, ever-increasing growth, and mass-produced goods and mass-produced experiences are what we expect and demand. Need I say, the Machine, with its digital creations and digital processes, loves our infatuation with quantity because it is best placed to provide us with the abundant quantities we demand.
Overcoming our love for quantity, and the deeply ingrained habits of the mass-produced digital age, will be a mammoth task of will and wisdom. Too much is at stake, though, for us not to embark on this difficult journey towards the good and the better.
Another powerful antidote to the Machine is immersing ourselves in the natural world: in its beauty, its rhythms, and its seasons. Not only will this remind us of what is authentic in this age of AI-generated inauthenticity, but spending time in nature will expose us to the polar opposite of the digital world and digital ways of doing things. What’s more, as we deliberately train our Machine-wearied attentions to once again notice and name what we see in nature, we will soon find ourselves delighting in what we see. And once we come to realise that the Machine — with its insatiable appetite for consuming natural resources, natural habitats, and energy — is destroying what we love, we will be stirred to protect, defend, and conserve the natural world from the predations of the Machine and will seek to limit our own complicity in its schemes by saying a firm and steadfast “No”.
The Machine is not inevitable. And though its continued invasion and colonisation of ever more aspects of our society and our personal lives may appear to be almost certain, it is only because we as a society are consenting for this to be so. We do have the power to say “Thus far and no further”. The issue is, have we trained our minds to desire the good and do we have the will power to say “No” to the Machine?
We will soon find out.
This essay is free to read but any tips to support my writing are most appreciated. If just 10% of my readers tipped $/£1 this essay would pay for itself in the amount of time that has gone into it.
This use of the word no as an antidote to the Machine was inspired by Tessa Carman’s excellent talk at the 2023 Front Porch Republic conference https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/conference/2023-conference/
For example, though I own and use a smartphone, I have purposefully refused to use social media apps on it. And like many writers, I refuse to use generative AI.
L.T.C. Rolt, Small Machines for Small Famers.
I am intrigued. The Machine. I sometimes call it the Matrix, like in the movie. It has been called the Moloch. But what to do about it, in particular in the times of AI? Your slogan "Say No to the Machine" is simple and points into a direction.
This resonates. I work in tech which ironically only creates more resentment internally for myself towards it. The other day I ordered something online and in the email confirmation they wanted me to download an app just to track the package... Wtf? I just want to know when it's going to get here, I shouldn't need to download an app, setup a username and password (or better yet facial recognition) so I can see where the thing I ordered is in the process of shipping.