General Ludd has recently been sighted in France. At least that is what one might be led to believe based on stories about French taxi drivers protesting against Uber. After all, whenever a confrontation pits a technology company against another group of people (who do not happen to be a rival technology company) it is a pretty safe assumption that those opposing the tech firm will be dubbed Luddites.

Often this is simply the result of a mixture of mockery and laziness. The Luddites, particularly in the tech adoring media, have come to function as a convenient cultural short hand for any opposition to technology. It is a label that is used to suggest that a group of people is blithely opposing the vast category of “technology” (as such) whilst simultaneously casting this opposition as backwards looking, pointless, and foolish. It does not take particularly much these days to earn…