From June 28 to July 5, the Summer of Ludd flourished in and around Tompkins Square Park in the East Village. The weeklong offline festival of public participatory programming — including teach-ins, art builds, and community games — was organized by the technocritical Neo-Luddite movement and drew more than 1,000 participants throughout the week.
Inspired by the Luddites of early 19th-century England — a labor movement of skilled textile workers who smashed new machines to protect themselves from exploitation — the Neo-Luddites have brought the spirit of technocriticism to the 21st century by rejecting digital technology for its harmful effects and opting instead for analog methods of social connection.
Koohan Paik-Mander advised the core organizers of the Summer of Ludd throughout its conception, planning process, and execution.
A demilitarization and environmental activist in the Asia-Pacific region since the early 2000s, Paik-Mander is a co-founder of the Tech Critics Network. Her forthcoming book, Digitizing the Sacred, synthesizes the seminal experiences of her life that have informed her Luddite position. These include growing up in the margins of Empire in Korea and Guam, being married to an AI and drone designer for Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, as one of thousands of artists displaced from San Francisco during the 1990s heyday of techno-utopian fever, mobilizing in Asia against the destructive digitization of warfare, and most recently as an advisor to Summer of Ludd.
The Indypendent spoke with Paik-Mander after her keynote speech at the festival’s academic conference on Luddism in the 21st century. We discussed the broader context surrounding the Neo-Luddite movement, and what’s next for Luddism.
The Indypendent: How are you feeling about Luddism these days?
We’re on the map now. Today, The Economist came out with a very supportive and understanding article. It was short, but it wasn’t glib. What that means is that we’re on the map globally, and that we’re in the global cultural consciousness.
There’s nothing more frightening to Silicon Valley than the specter of mobs of people getting offline. Because that means we’re off of their turf and on our turf, where they’ve got no power.
What exactly scares Silicon Valley about mobs of people being offline?
You ever play sports? Sometimes you play a home game, sometimes you play away, and it’s always an advantage to play on your own turf. The same goes for warfare, and it’s the same thing with analog and digital.
Analog is the human turf. Digital is the oligarchs’ turf, and they have no power over us when we’re connected in an analog existence. The oligarchs know that already — but not enough of us know it yet. Once we do, we’ll have a superpower: our analog humanity.
There’s nothing more frightening to Silicon Valley than the specter of mobs of people getting offline. Because that means we’re off of their turf and on our turf, where they’ve got no power.
In its purest form, this superpower is the spontaneous and unrestricted cross-pollination of ideas and energies. Our imagination is limitless. Once we go online, however, we’re limited to tiny, tiny boxes and drop-down menus. These options, which Silicon Valley engineers prescribed to us, have deliberately predetermined conclusions.
It’s the difference between being a sovereign human being and being colonized digitally, between vibing and having algorithms direct you. The latter is akin to the experience of colonization, if not being colonization itself.
I grew up in the colony of Guam, whose people are subjects of the United States. There’s a series of laws, structures, institutions, educational concepts, culture, and language imposed on its people. It’s the same with Silicon Valley, except that the big tech companies are doing that to everybody on Earth. How can you be empowered in who you are, your history, and your identity, when the internet truncates everything that came before?
This truncation happens through the narrative that if it doesn’t exist online, it doesn’t exist at all. That narrative is what rules the preposterous existence that we’ve been made to live under this digital colonization.
That narrative seems to be an ideology that exposes its own falsity. When these platforms convey that things have to be online to be real, they reveal the source of their power — users staying online — while trying to conceal it. That ideology also suggests the truth that most real things are actually offline.
There’s this concept called digital twinning or digital twins, and it’s used in the military. It’s when you create a digital space that is an analog — pardon the pun — to the analog space it represents.
The Blue Angel jets that fly through the air, for example, aren’t looking out the window — they’re looking at a screen that’s the digital twin of how they’re moving forward. The screen in a Tesla, too. These are digital twins of reality.
When you spend time in a digital twin, it’s like a video game where you’re manipulating the machine and not reality. The danger in that is that we don’t control the digital twins — the big tech companies do.
This gets dangerous when Palantir creates digital twins for government agencies to skirt their intended regulations. They know that anytime they create a digital twin of anything, they’re suddenly in charge. It’s their turf. It’s no longer analog, and it’s no longer public — now it’s privatized, non-transparent, and non-democratic.
Back to the analog superpower — what’s the relationship between an individual refusing to use certain digital technologies, entire communities going offline, and tangible political change on a greater scale? Is individual and collective refusal the foundation for further political action?
What’s ironic and gives me a bit of glee is that even if people are rejecting digital technology for completely personal and apolitical reasons, their preference to be offline still cuts into the profits of Silicon Valley. So in a certain sense, it doesn’t matter much if they’re politically aware or not — as long as it catches on.
Luddism will grow, and [Silicon Valley] will respond by using money to lure the masses into continuing to give up our data. I foresee them offering people money in exchange for people spending a certain amount of time online. Most people will think it’s just free money!
But the cash that they’ll give is a pittance compared to the power and control that they’ll gain aggregating and reconfiguring our data so that it can be used to target advertising and lobbying, sway elections, and push certain policies.
It’s obvious that the United States is going in an authoritarian direction, and there’s no better technological expression of authoritarianism than digital technology — it centralizes control. If people still think that it’s a democratizing force, wake up and look around.
All I’ve seen in the last 40 years is a drastic, steady acceleration of inequity. Control is centralized in Silicon Valley: Of the 10 richest individuals on the whole planet, eight of them are in Silicon Valley. That alone tells you that this technology is not a democratizing force.
Digital technology has changed significantly over the past few decades. Newer devices and apps appear to foster democratization and greater autonomy by giving users seemingly unlimited freedom, despite confining them to the digital world. What is this illusion doing, and how does it conceal what you consider to be an authoritarian and anti-democratic centralization of control?
It just shows how deft and sophisticated this sinister technology is — it’s a master of illusion, and one of its cornerstones is the capacity for simulacra. It’s the idea of a digital twin again: we’re given a digital twin of democracy, except that it’s not democracy at all. While the digital world looks like everything that we hold dear, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s Silicon Valley’s evil world.
The strength of a digital network is based on the number of its users. Airbnb, for example, has over 40 million users in the United States. That’s a lot of power they hold just from the sheer quantity of their users.
Meanwhile, the users of these online platforms are made to feel as if they’re active members of different communities — while in reality we’re objects and not subjects. We’re categorized, sliced and diced, run through AI, and manipulated. We feel like we exercise agency by joining online communities, but they’re just digital twins, simulacra.
And again, this digital technology has a military genesis. The capacity for illusion is one of the most powerful tools in war, and Silicon Valley is waging a war against us right now. They’re imposing a fog of war on us — their enemies — so that we don’t understand what’s up or what’s down. At the same time, thanks to constant surveillance, they see us clearly.
We’re in their digital twins, thinking that we’re in reality, while we’re in fact being culturally and cognitively ambushed and attacked. It’s a massacre. It’s cognitive genocide.
The Summer of Ludd was the most moving experience of my entire life — it was beautiful to see so many people experience joy they had never experienced before by simply being back home in their humanity with others. It’s in our DNA.
Even though this is the first generation that was raised with this digital technology, the idea of a “digital native” is a misnomer. We’re not digital natives — we’re human beings, we’re natives of Mother Earth, and we must go back to our ancestors to understand who we are as human beings. Right now, we’re under occupation by Silicon Valley.
At the Summer of Ludd, I felt that there was room for more diversity — racially, generationally, and socioeconomically. While it makes sense that privilege can make it easier to go offline, it also seems like the responsibility of those who have an easier time getting offline to take the first step and create spaces that intentionally bring others in. What do you think about diversity in Luddism — how can it become a more diverse and inclusive movement?
In revolutions, it is often the elite class that has the privilege to learn and study history and then the responsibility to bring their learnings to the masses. That’s what we need to do here, and the masses will be happy to join in. Nobody wants to be a digital slave, and working-class people are suffering the most and will be the first to fall into the big heap of discarded humanity if Silicon Valley has its way.
That being said, it’s true that the most privileged can lead Luddism, simply because they’re able to give up more. But Luddism is for everyone — people are spontaneously erupting into their own creative spaces, and I think that diversity is just going to happen. Most people find being offline irresistible.
People are fed up — people are fed up with the AI business, and people are fed up with data centers. Because this technology pervades every nook and cranny of human existence and civilization, every nook and cranny is disgusted, and people will respond accordingly.
Everyone will respond according to whatever suits their particular lifestyle and inclination. That could be mutual aid; it could be theater — I know that a theater company will probably rise out of this, because these guys have written so many plays.
And, while there will be more radical groups, even the most seemingly benign pushback is still significant because it means being offline, and that itself is radical. That’s the worst nightmare for Silicon Valley, because then they’ve got nothing to hook you.
Despite the non-democratic nature of digital technology, social movements of all kinds — environmental, antiwar, and even technocritical movements like Luddism — have used digital technology to their advantage. How have you seen the use of digital technology in organizing evolve, and how can we rescue the potentially beneficial aspects of these technologies from their harmful effects?
I’m pretty hardcore in my position — I believe that it’s not possible to do so. What we think of as the beneficial aspects of digital technology are merely elements of a technology that is primarily a weapon that is being used against us. In the end, even those seemingly beneficial aspects will be used to harm us.
I also don’t think people understand that there is no such thing as truly secure communication online. The owners of a platform can promise that they won’t violate their users, sure, but what happens when they go out of business? All of their data can be sold to another company, or the military, and used for unthinkable acts of evil.
This is one reason why I’m an abolitionist, an absolute abolitionist.
What do you mean by “abolitionist” in this context?
I’m an abolitionist of digital technology, which is the technology that rose up at the beginning of the Cold War in the wake of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — that’s its DNA, that’s its genesis. Those are the values that it carries with it, and we don’t want that in our world.
In 2015, Pokémon was all the rage, and all the kids were taking pictures everywhere of Pokémon. Last year, all those pictures, all those images taken by children, were sold to a company that designs targeting guidance technology for killer drones.
It’s so sinister — innocent children being used as pawns in this genocide industry. That wasn’t part of the deal! But what it shows us is when we get online, everything we do can and will be used against us. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not even in our lifetime. But it will certainly be used against our species, because this data never goes away.
We both have phones, we both use email, and right now we’re talking on Zoom. What does being a digital technology abolitionist mean in practice?
It’s very similar to being a climate activist and taking airplanes. You must have an analysis of the actions you’re taking. But I do shudder when I have to make a Zoom call, and I do shudder when I have to take an airplane. I shudder, but it’s better than having no awareness.
And as we all gain awareness together, we’re all getting on the same page. Right now we’ve got an anti-climate, anti-human, anti-Earth administration in the White House. But we’re talking, honing our analysis, and using this time to get on the same page.
In the meantime, this movement is growing. A marketing website for new products cited Luddism as the fastest-growing cultural movement in the United States right now. Soon they’ll start designing more dumbphones and getting on the capitalistic anti-tech bandwagon. It’s great, in a way, but it’s also terrible because it’s commodified and consumerist.
Still, they called Luddism the fastest-growing cultural movement in the United States — and Summer of Ludd was created through Zoom. We would have much preferred to meet in person, because that’s the kind of people we are, but we used Zoom.
It’s just about having an awareness and working toward analog alternatives, which I think is a noble cause. In drawing so many people without using social media, Summer of Ludd was courageous and visionary. We can do it. We have to keep going.
What are some choices you make in your personal life as a digital technology abolitionist?
When computers were first brought in the 90s and took my office space in San Francisco, because I had witnessed the military genesis of this technology, I was famous for not accepting anything. When the smartphone came out in 2007, I was horrified.
I’m a super late adopter. It’s not about what I’m doing to get off these technologies — I’m staying off until the very last minute. I didn’t get a smartphone until a job forced me to, and I still have a landline. I moved to a part of Hawaii that’s famous for not having any Wi-Fi or any cell phone service or anything.
I steer my life in an analog direction. I have no apps on my phone. I don’t even put phone numbers in my phone — I memorize all my friends’ phone numbers by heart. I always use cash.
Let’s imagine a twenty-year-old who has grown up with digital technology. What would you recommend for such a person who wants to resist this technology while feeling the need to have a phone, computer, and email for their day-to-day life?
I can advise people based on my own experience, but it’s harder to say how others should practice Luddism. Instead, I recommend the wonderful research being done by Damian Thomas, Logan Lane, and others. They’re good intermediaries: they see how I do things and then make adaptations that speak to their own people. I’m more of an advisor — I know Luddism is possible because that’s how I live my life, but it looks different for everyone and especially across age groups.
Let’s talk more about the Summer of Ludd. What were your expectations for the week? How were they met?
It exceeded all my expectations. I’ve been organizing anti-tech events for the past 15 years, and I’m used to being Luddite-shamed and people not being interested, but the Summer of Ludd met the moment. With the dystopian state of AI and technology-induced alienation, the organizers knew that it had to be this year, even though it felt like an impossible feat to pull off. But there were so many people, so many volunteers, and so we went for it.
Back in 2025, I helped organize a “luddite camp” where 10 people who were serious about Luddism came together to discuss the movement. Everyone had a different background and approach – lobbying, policy work in D.C., hyperlocal Luddite Clubs in New York, anti-military efforts.
We talked about a hypothetical Summer of Ludd. I loved the idea, but I didn’t know if we were serious about it — I thought the plan was going to peter out. But when two of the core organizers decided to take time off from college to work on the Summer of Ludd, I knew it would meet the moment. You could feel the power and the momentum. I was in Hawaii, but I could feel it all the way from New York.
I realized Summer of Ludd was going to be even bigger when I saw Gowanus, the Luddites’ “spokespuppet,” being interviewed by Hasan Minhaj — they hit the ball out of the park. The next day, NPR had “luddite” as their word of the week, and I knew that Summer of Ludd had legs and it’s running. Even so, I didn’t expect it to be this good. It was incredible. It was heaven.
And right now was the perfect moment for the festival because Gen Z is going to college and thinking and talking together about our digital technology crisis.
How important was the idea of public space for the Summer of Ludd?
I originally wanted us to have the festival in an old church that had been turned into a disco in the ’80s — I thought it would be perfect. But one organizer told me that it needed to happen in public space. And I didn’t really understand.
Now I get it. Having the Summer of Ludd at Tompkins Square Park allowed passersby to observe the festivities, participate in the events, and learn about Luddism. It was a wonderful way of helping our movement cut across socioeconomic strata.
Having been a digital technology abolitionist for decades, how would you contextualize Summer of Ludd in the broader evolution of technocritical organizing?
It was a miracle — a historic milestone. Your generation will be remembered for this, with gratitude. You’re the freedom fighters of the oppressed, brainwashed, and mind-occupied people.
[The Neo-Luddites] are the freedom fighters of the oppressed, brainwashed, and mind-occupied people.
Maybe I’m speaking in the afterglow of amazing joy. There are certainly going to be people taking us down, undermining us, and infiltrating us — we’re talking big, big money. The greatest wealth in human history is at stake, and these people are heartless and will stop at nothing.
There is going to be a rocky road ahead, and we need to tread forward with love, because that is our superpower.
You said that the Summer of Ludd met the moment. What about Gen Z makes them particularly well-positioned to resist the nefariousness of digital technology?
I’m a boomer, and I’ve talked to all the generations that have come after me. I talked to Gen X; they didn’t get it. I talked to millennials; they didn’t get it. Gen Z are the first generation to have had this technology since birth, in living memory, and that has coincided with the fact that they’re in college now, with Trump’s deregulation, and with the rise of AI. It’s all those things coming together.
I’m 65 years old, and I have been completely dismissed on Luddism — an issue that is existential for humanity — for my entire life. So I appreciate that there’s a generation who finally understands. I feel like I’ve come home. I’ve been waiting my whole life for you guys to be born. I’m not kidding.
The prevailing narrative around digital technology seems to recognize some of its harmful effects without adopting the explicitly technocritical framework that you’ve synthesized so clearly. How can young people bring technocriticism deeper into the discursive mainstream?
I feel it happening naturally, because I think compartments of people’s minds are being opened up. What’s so great about the Summer of Ludd is that it has emboldened every generation all around the world — I’ve seen stories about it in India, Brazil, and South Africa. Because of Luddism’s colorfulness, joy, and vibrancy, the movement is unlocking mental compartments that people never knew they could access.
Questioning technology is like questioning God — our relationship to technology is one of worship. What’s critical here is that we’re finally gaining the agency to question technology in our own way. That never happened before, and I think this agency will grow into a sophisticated technocritical canon of works.
Questioning technology is like questioning God — our relationship to technology is one of worship.
We’re at the beginning of the movement for the next century, and Summer of Ludd kicked it off. It’s historic, as I’ve said before, and I’m so proud to be a part of it. Luddism is catching the wave of anti-tech sentiment, and we need to deftly ride it to shore with a keen awareness of reality that cuts through Silicon Valley’s fog of war.
