‘Direct Action Against Computerization (1960-1990)’

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 18:59:38 +0000

In the political genealogy of computers, and even more so in the dominant historiography of the Internet, [neo-Luddite] opposition has been largely overlooked.

Among the actors who contributed in one way or another to shaping these technologies and the discourse surrounding them before the 1990s, postwar humanist scientists and technophile hippies of the 1960s are often mentioned (see, for example, the works of Fred Turner). Together, they helped to remove computers from large bureaucracies by promoting smaller machines, designed as tools for individual liberation, with all the unthoughts that were theirs (and ours, one might say, since their hopes and utopias also greatly influenced the dominant discourse on the Internet…). In the history of the right to personal data protection, we also sometimes refer to computer scientists, researchers, and lawyers who, as early as the 1960s, alerted public opinion and legislators to the risks of these technologies for privacy.

Luddites on Félix Tréguer

‘Direct Action Against Computerization (1960-1990)’