Welcome to Stack Overthrow!
Stack Overthrow aims to collect resources, knowledge, and strategies for Luddites and the tech-critical.
Do you use the Internet? Chances are, since you are viewing this page, that you do. But do you use the Internet, or does the Internet use you?
Stack Overthrow begins from the premise that life in the current moment (what one may call the Anthropocene, or late capitalism, or techno-fedualism, or something else) is inextricably tied to technological capitalism.
This synthesis of global finance with technological 'innovation' is an existential threat to humanity. Not (necessarily) because AI is about to enslave us all, but because tech's need for continual economic growth has clearly detrimental effects on the human condition, democracy, and the planet's ecological balance.
Stack Overthrow argues for a new movement of Luddites to organise and come together, not only to oppose (and sabotage!) technological capitalism, but to take control of tech and engineer it to serve the public interest.
The historical Luddites were organised textile workers in 19th century England, who famously destroyed automated machinery that was responsible for their own economic precarity. The term is often (mis-)used perjoratively, to describe people who eschew modern technology.
But Luddism persists today, perhaps better called neo-luddism, an emerging movement of thinkers, artists, hackers, and activists who are trying to fight back against the tech industry and replace it with something better.
If you are critical of technology – perhaps because its products are increasingly enshittified, or because your economic survival is becoming more and more difficult due to the gig economy, or for any other reason – than you may already be a Luddite!
Further reading: "I’m a Luddite. You should be one too.", Jathan Sadowski, The Conversation, 2021.
Stack Overthrow is a new project, but hopes to organise links, original writing, and other resources into several dictions of pursuit:
While Stack Overthrow is being built, we are keeping this wiki to be invite-only. But if you would like to have an account, contact us via our parent project Perfect Lives.