💥 Christmas is coming and my book is coming too! This monthly post about The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia discusses my approach of building a discursive strategy. It explains how I was choosing epigraphs and what books and authors influenced my writing style.
CBI Image of the Day: J. Boyer Machine Co. employees seated and standing outside of the Boyer Machine Shop in St. Louis, MO, ca 1890s. This would evolve into the Burroughs Adding Machine Company and later Burroughs Corporation, a computer manufacturer headquartered in Detroit for most of the 20th century before merging with Sperry Univac to become Unisys.
The Luddites weren’t backward technophobes. They saw factory owners using tech to degrade their livelihoods and they fought back — first by trying to negotiate, then writing to Parliament, and finally smashing the machines.
As workers today organize and strike over bosses using digital tech to upend their industries, there’s a lot we can learn from the Luddites’ story. I was thrilled to dig into it with @brianmerchant!