Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech

The "gripping" (New Yorker) and "eye-opening" (New Scientist) true story of the first time machines came for human jobs--and how the Luddite uprising explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech and AI today

A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 - Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year - One of the New Yorker's "Best Books We Read This Week" - A Next Big Idea Book Club "Must-Read" The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods.

The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines--on punishment of death--and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees.

Today, technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are crowding factory floors, and artificial intelligence will soon pervade every aspect of our economy. How will this change the way we live? And what can we do about it?

The answers lie in Blood in the Machine. Brian Merchant intertwines a lucid examination of our current age with the story of the Luddites, showing how automation changed our world--and is shaping our future.

ISBN-13: 9780316487740

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Little - Brown and Company

Publication Date: 09-26-2023

Pages: 496

Product Dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.60(d)

Brian Merchant is the technology columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the author of the national bestseller The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone. He’s the co-founder of Terraform, Vice’s science fiction outlet, and the founder of Gizmodo’s Automaton project examining AI and the future of work. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, Fast Company, and beyond. He lives in Los Angeles.