Luddite Academy

Towards a politicised digital creative practice

David Benqué
Institute of Diagram Studies

3rd Symposium on Digital Art in Ireland
22 April 2026

Full stack problems

Adobe Cloud logo + source unknown
https://www.are.na/block/17403221

As the vectoralist class consolidates its monopoly on the means of realizing the value of intellectual property, it confronts the hacker class more and more as a class antagonist.

Wark, M. (2004) A Hacker Manifesto. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.

Radicalised vectoralist class

Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk attend the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, on January 20, 2025. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson – Pool / Getty Images)

Our agreement with the Department of War, OpenAI, 28^th Feb. 2026 (update on 2^nd March) https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-of-war

The Luddite revival

Searching for new critical narratives to hold-on to in this techno-political climate, some authors, researchers, and journalists have been reviving a 200 year old social movement as a powerful counter-imaginary: the luddites.

Textile workers in early 19th century England, they became known for sabotage actions on automated machinery such as stocking frames that were being imposed by factory owners.

While “luddite” has since been used as a derogatory term to designate people opposed to progress and technology, the term is enjoying a resurgence in recent years with books and articles revisiting the history and politics of the luddite movement and giving it a new relevance in contemporary technological struggles.

It transpires that the luddites had very little to do with being anti-technology. Instead they politicised it as part of a wider struggle attempting to stop the deterioration of a highly skilled craft towards a low-skill low-wage labour.

Translated to today’s context, we can see the luddites as radical creative technologists; highly knowledgeable of their tools and of the power relationships threatening their livelihoods.

https://www.notechforapartheid.com/

The Luddite Club of Oberlin College (2026) ‘Oberlin Luddites Reject "Year of AI Exploration" Adopted by School’, The Luddite Dispatch.

image: Data Centre Conference Disruption and Protest at the RDS, November 2024. Friends of the Earth Ireland

Murphy, D. and Brodie, P. (2026) ‘Canary in the data mine: Irish data centre activism amid planetary flows, frictions and antagonism’, Media, Culture & Society. SAGE Publications Ltd. doi: 10.1177/01634437261422614.

Luddite Spectrum

State of the (luddite) art

Free and Open Source Software
Artist-led infrastructure
Training in systems administration

Free software and free culture

Free software is an example of a Luddite technology: an innovation in the interest of the preservation of practitioners’ autonomy against the imposition of control over the labor process by capitalists.

Mueller, G. (2021) Breaking things at work: The Luddites were right about why you hate your job. London: Verso.

more critical perspective with: Mansoux, A. (2023) ‘Nothing in Commons: The end of digital collective ownership?’, in Collective Ownerhsip. Available at: https://collectiefeigendom.nl/en/ownership/digital-collective-ownership (Accessed: 21 March 2026).

Adobe Alternatives - @XdanielArt on X archived at https://www.are.na/block/28639995

Codeberg https://codeberg.org

Pre Post Print https://prepostprint.org/

Artist-led digital infrastructure

𓅣 LURK

federated social media
discussion lists
chat
audio-streaming
wikis

lurk.org

Varia, hypha, LURK, esc ml, FHM, and Constant. ‘A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers’. 2022. https://txt.lurk.org/ATNOFS/.

Sysadmin training

Oliver, J. (2019) ‘Server Infrastructure for Global Rebellion’, in The Chaos Communication Congress 36C3. Berlin. Available at: https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-11008-server_infrastructure_for_global_rebellion (Accessed: 2 April 2026).

Server architecture diagram by Julian Oliver, Nikau.io

Programme of work

Audit
Sabotage
Admin & Maintenance

Audit

The Institute for Technology In the Public Interest (2022--2027) Counter Cloud Action Plan: NEoN Digital Ethics Audit. Available at: https://titipi.org/activities?projects/digital-ethics-audit (Accessed: 15 January 2026).

Sabotage

Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group (2025) ‘Sabot in the Age of AI’ https://tldr.nettime.org/@asrg/113867412641585520

Science is poetry, Julian Oliver https://julianoliver.com/projects/science-is-poetry/

https://sales.luddite.academy

Administration and maintenance

https://luddite.academy

Zine

Octomode software (Etherpad + Pandoc + Flask) - https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki/Octomode

Octomode pad view - https://zine.luddite.tools

Octomode PDF view - https://zine.luddite.tools

Docs

Luddite Docs running CryptPad https://cryptpad.org

Future tools

Delta Chat https://delta.chat, GoToSocial https://gotosocial.org/

Conclusions

The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest,
From Cloud to Crowd: A residency in the Keiller Center
https://neondigitalarts.com/projects/from-cloud-to-crowd/

David Benqué david@diagram.institute