They Always Complained: A History of Human Resistance to the Future Kindle Edition

They complained about the printing press. They complained about the telephone. They complained about the internet. They are complaining about AI right now. And they were perfectly silent when every single one of those technologies was working for them.Are you watching the artificial intelligence debate and feeling like you have heard it all before? You have.In They Always Complained: A History of Human Resistance to the Future, twenty year information technology veteran Darryl J. Gordwin reveals the most consistent pattern in human history. Every generation encounters a transformative technology. Every generation produces the same outrage. The same borrowed principles. The same selective complaint from the same people at the same moment in the same cycle.When it served them they called it progress. When it threatened them they called it a crisis.What This Book CoversGordwin traces the pattern across thousands of years and dozens of technologies. From Socrates raging against the written word and the printing press panic that terrified the Catholic Church to the Luddites smashing factory looms and the radio brain rot arguments of the 1920s. From the television idiot box controversy and the rock and roll moral panic to the internet will never last predictions and the nobody will ever shop online certainty. From the Bluetooth people look insane mockery to the self checkout is stealing jobs outrage to the AI is taking our jobs fear dominating headlines today.In every case the complaint was sincere. In every case the catastrophe was wrong. In every case the people bearing the highest cost received the least protection from the people capturing the gains.What Makes This Book DifferentThis is not a technology cheerleading book. The disruption is real. The cost is real. The people whose livelihoods are threatened by artificial intelligence today deserve more support and more protection than they are receiving. That argument is made clearly and without apology.But this book also asks the question that nobody in the AI debate is asking honestly.Where were you when the algorithm was recommending your content? When the AI was navigating your drive? When the system was filtering your spam and detecting your fraud and curating your music and predicting your preferences?You were not concerned then. You called it convenient.The concern arrived when the AI crossed a specific line. When it stopped serving you and started competing with you.They Always Complained names that pattern. Documents it. Traces it across forty three chapters from ancient history to the present moment. And demands the response that the pattern has always required and that every generation has always provided insufficiently.Who This Book Is ForThis book is for anyone engaged with the artificial intelligence debate who wants the historical context that the debate is missing. For technology professionals who have watched disruption cycles repeat and want the language to name what they are seeing. For workers navigating technological change who deserve to understand the pattern they are living through. For leaders making decisions about AI deployment who need to understand what they owe the people in the path of the decisions they are making. For anyone who has ever complained about technology. Which is everyone.What Readers Are SayingThe most honest book about technology and human nature available today.Gordwin named the pattern. Now I cannot unsee it.Required reading for anyone making decisions about AI in their organization. Read more